In my previously described situation (stuck on propagation with a few other issues thrown in), the problem recurred, and repeating the procedure (moving the index file location on all query servers) again provided relief.
Since I needed more than a few hours of relief and I could see nothing new was making it's becoming available to search, I also stopped indexing. Over night, this allowed propagation to clear itself. Since all was well, I boldly turned indexing back on. More good results - all the new content made it to the query servers and continued to do so. I still may have issues because after a while, the propagating status once again seemed stuck, but content is getting added and we are otherwise healthy (otherwise - that is a big qualification).
It would be great to get an in-depth explanation of what the services are doing when they report various statuses. I wish I could give one - I want to get this explanation. My own experience has been that although monitoring the services can be alarming, they work well. Indexes are built and updated quickly, even when things do not appear to be working very well. This from a person whose life has been made much more stressful by having to watch over this system.
To view more details about what the services are doing, check out the log files located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\LOGS. These files provide a wealth of information.
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