This has happened to me on the update of the 30th of January on several servers, I just had the time to check one of them and saw that it was samba that was sharing the pipes with run-parts and thus stopping it and leaving apt defunct.
This server runs i386 stable and has a 686 based kernel and runs with anacron, no crons had run since the 30th of January, which can be quite a problem on a server, no logs rotated or anything :-( Ideas? tests? Regards... -- Manty/BestiaTester -> http://manty.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org