flussence++ found a workaround by turning off parrot garbage collection in the failing steps.
For example add -G to the line below in nqp/tools/build/Makefile.in $(PARROT) -library=$(STAGE0) $(STAGE0)/$(NQP_PBC) \ --target=pir --output=$(STAGE1)/$(CORE_SETTING_PIR) \ --module-path=$(STAGE1) --setting=NULL --no-regex-lib \ $(STAGE1)/$(CORE_SETTING_NQP) like : $(PARROT) -G -library=$(STAGE0) $(STAGE0)/$(NQP_PBC) \ --target=pir --output=$(STAGE1)/$(CORE_SETTING_PIR) \ --module-path=$(STAGE1) --setting=NULL --no-regex-lib \ $(STAGE1)/$(CORE_SETTING_NQP) and that's enough to get me running. flussence needed to add the -G flag to one later step involving the core setting and stage 2. Ron