This process is never able to complete. It just runs...no error messages, load avg spikes to around 15, but nothing ever finishes.
Ideas? What logs should I look at?
The output of 'ps fax' would be the first place I would look - it will indicate which subprocess of 'signal-event email-update' is not completing.
/var/log/messages should also contain a log line for each event which completes.
Open a bug in the bug tracker, and include the output of:
ls /etc/e-smith/events/email-update
and attach /var/log/messages.
I would guess that you have a badly behaved contrib installed.