GDB 6 fork/exec hangs the debugged program

[George Garvey <tmwg-fedorat inxservices com>]

   I can no longer stop at a breakpoint after a fork/exec. I tried building
a gdb 6 before once was available from Fedora, and had the same problem.
All of the fedora RPMs have exhibited this.
   Even without a breakpoint, the forked program doesn't seem to work. In
this case, the fork is executing lpr.
   This is what happens, instead:

(gdb) break SHPrint.cc:1256
Breakpoint 1 at 0x809ebdf: file SHPrint.cc, line 1256.
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/tmwg/src/12.10/pentium4_fltkb/edic/client/Starplast/EDICourier -geom +860+725
malloc: using debugging hooks
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread -1084627872 (LWP 11446)]
malloc: using debugging hooks
Detaching after fork from child process 11449.
malloc: using debugging hooks
malloc: using debugging hooks
warning: Unexpected waitpid result 02057f when waiting for vfork-done