Octave hangs forever trying to invert singular matrix

[Carlo de Falco]

Hi,

I have a 480x480 sparse matrix of rank 479
trying to solve

A\ones(480,1)

makes matlab throw a warning and return garbage

>> A\ones(480,1)
Warning: Matrix is close to singular or badly scaled.
        Results may be inaccurate. RCOND = 3.815118e-20.

ans =

  1.0e+17 *

  -0.2637
  -0.2637
  -0.2637
  -0.2637
  -0.2637
  -0.2637
  -0.2637

on the other hand Octave hangs forever.
Is there a way to check before-hand whether the system can be solved  
to prevent Octave from going into "Guru meditation mode"?
Is this to be considered a bug?

I am using Thomas' 3.2.3 binary on Mac OS X.
c.