I experienced the same issue, with the Test Suite freezing on the first "basics". CPU was very high and the log was littered with logs like this
[Wed, 26 May 2010 17:34:18 GMT] [debug] [<0.1014.0>] OS Process Start :: #Port<0.2005>
[Wed, 26 May 2010 17:34:18 GMT] [debug] [<0.1014.0>] OS Process
#Port<0.2005> Input :: ["reset",{"reduce_limit":true}]
[Wed, 26 May 2010 17:34:18 GMT] [error] [<0.786.0>] OS Process Error <0.1014.0> :: {os_process_error,{exit_status,127}}
I was able to fix the issue when I ran couchdb manually, with LD_LIBRARY_PATH set to the lib directory for xulrunner-devel, which was one of the prerequisites I believe.
# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/xulrunner-devel-1.9.2.3/lib
# /usr/local/bin/couchdb
All tests ran successfully when started like this.
EDIT:
A more permanent fix is to add the above xulrunner-devel path to a file under /etc/ld.so.conf.d. On my machine I made a file /etc/ld.so.conf.d/couchdb.conf with the contents
/usr/lib/xulrunner-devel-1.9.2.3/lib
Then I ran ldconfig and restarted CouchDB.
Sidenote: When I previously started CouchDB manually I did it as root, which caused some permission issues, so make sure that all permissions are set correctly where you installed CouchDB.