hostapd statement causes boot hang if /usr is not on /

Binary package hint: ifupdown

I upgraded a server to karmic to get ath5k AP ability.
/usr is a separate filesystem (on LVM)

If I put the following in /etc/network/interfaces, I get a boot hang immediatly after the execution of upstart at the end of the initrd

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
        address 10.42.42.1
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

Commenting out auto and manually bringing up the interface after boot allows it to boot cleanly.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Oct 18 10:30:48 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: ifupdown 0.6.8ubuntu21
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_ZA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.47-generic
SourcePackage: ifupdown
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686