Slow Export

We are having trouble with slow exports on Oracle 8.1.7 running on a Sun server.
Exports that used to take 30 minutes are now running 9 hours. If I do a file system copy, it runs very fast. So I don't think it is the file system.
Even an export direct=y to a /dev/null file runs forever.  

We have looked at everything.
Any ideas?  

Thanks!
Ron

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