[tex-live] issue with input stack size

[Karl Berry]

    http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/2010-October/018895.html

What I can report is that modifying my /usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf.cnf
and rebuilding lualatex.fmt (and pdflatex.fmt, didn't try others), did
indeed alter the maximum values of the parameters, as shown in the last
line of the log file.  That's what concerned me from the TL end :).

Now, the actual error I get is:

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [input stack size=5000].
remove at star #1*->
                 #1
l.5 hi \emph{hello}

which is almost surely an infinite loop, so the actual stack size is
irrelevant.

I hope you or someone can resolve the macro problem, whatever it is.
I don't have the energy to delve into that myself, sorry.

Good luck,
Karl