🚀 go-pugleaf

I have some code which maintains a database; the db lives in a file of elisp
forms.  For efficiency, I read the file into a buffer and parse its contents
into lisp forms which live on a buffer-local variable.  To get to the data, I
call find-file-noselect, and look at the local variable on that buffer.  This
lets me notice when the file has changed on disk so that I can revert my
cache.  This means that I call find-file-noselect quite frequently, which is
the only file-related thing I do, really.

The problem is, this file is periodically being deleted out from under me!
Every now and then, find-file-noselect will signal an error that the file no
longer exists - and sure enough, it doesn't.  

My code never calls delete-file; it saves the file by calling save-buffer.

Even goofier is, if I select the buffer of the file which no longer exists,
make a trivial modification to it, and save it with \\[save-buffer], it claims
to have written it - but it HASN'T!  The file continues to not exist!  If I
explicitly write it with \\[write-file], then the thing actually shows up on
disk.

This is *catastrophically* bad behaviour.  What could be causing it?

Emacs 18.55, Sun3 4.03.

		-- Jamie