Thank you for the ideas. And you're correct, I need to provide more information:

• perl 5.8.5
• Devel::DProf::VERSION 20030813.00
• Red Hat machines, with kernels from 2.4.21-2.6.16
• Writing either to local ext3 filesystems or over NFS mounts

I can't seem to make the file usable...removing the bad data leads to other messages about 'garbled data', and further efforts just make things worse.