gdb processes signals while at breakpoing

  This is new to me, debugging on a FC4 distro.
  Our large program is not multithreaded or anything like that, but it 
does depend heavily on a fairly elaborate alarm system invoked with 
setitimer.
  In the past (eg., RH9 and older) there has been no problem.  But on 
the FC4 machine, despite "handle all noprint", once I am at a breakpoint 
every alarm suddenly throws me into the alarm handler, and stepping 
becomes practically impossible.  Suppressing the alarms would require 
major software changes and disable many functions.  I have not been able 
to find any reference to this problem or how to get around it, though 
perhaps I simply didn't know where to look or misunderstood what I 
found.  In which case, your patience is appreciated.
  I suspect I am in big trouble, and I would be grateful for any and all 
help.
  Thanks
  Jim