Ah, the elusive segfault.

To fix these, we really need a way to reliably reproduce the segfault. To quote Aurelien from the forums, here's what we'd need if anyone can get reproduceable segfaults:

To help troubleshooting such crashes, we need:
- pacman version
- the core file resulting of the crash
- a tarball of the directory /var/lib/pacman
- a copy of /etc/pacman.conf

To get a useful core dump, pacman needs to be compiled in debug mode:
- rebuild pacman package with the --nostrip option
- run "ulimit -c unlimited" to allow the core file creation
- run pacman to reproduce the crash (better with pacman.static)
- put the expected files somewhere where we can retrieve them, or try attaching them to a bug report (think to "gzip -9"!)

ah, too much for me to do. ;)

If it's any help, it really seems to happen when scrollkeeper updates its index. It doesn't happen on my Sony vaio laptop where only the gnome stuff are installed, but it happens on my other laptop and desktop where more stuff are installed, e.g. KDE and XFce stuff.

Okay, thanks Eugenia. I'll try to reproduce it on a test box here.

it just happened again:

Proceed with upgrade? [Y/n]

checking package integrity... done.
loading package data... done.
upgrading alsa-utils... done.
upgrading digikam... done.
upgrading libexif... done.
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5291 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5292 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5293 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5294 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5295 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5296 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5297 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5298 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5299 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5300 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-JKOakr/.INSTALL: line 37: 5301 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
upgrading eog... done.
/tmp/pacman-CrJQwv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5361 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
upgrading evolution... done.
upgrading evolution-data-server... done.
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5402 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5403 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5404 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5405 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5406 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5407 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5408 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5409 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5410 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5411 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5412 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5413 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
/tmp/pacman-VuZbkv/.INSTALL: line 37: 5414 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
upgrading file-roller... done.
upgrading gimp... done.
upgrading gphoto2... done.
/tmp/pacman-sf9z0K/.INSTALL: line 37: 5477 Segmentation fault scrollkeeper-uninstall -q -p var/lib/scrollkeeper "$scroll"
upgrading gthumb... done.
upgrading kipi-plugins... done.
upgrading libgphoto2... done.
upgrading libkexif... done.
upgrading man... done.
upgrading nautilus... done.
updating scrollkeeper catalogue ...
upgrading sqlite3... done.
upgrading ximian-connector... done.

Ah, I see. so it's not pacman segfaulting, but scrollkeeper-uninstall itself?

JGC, Arjan... any ideas?

there was another one the other day that was a pure pacman segfault (no packages had started installing yet)

another one, this one is a real pacman segfault:

checking package integrity... done.
removing nss-nspr... done.
loading package data... done.
checking for file conflicts... done.
upgrading mozilla... done.
Segmentation fault

[root@athlonxp eugenia]# pacman -S scrollkeeper
error: unable to lock pacman database.
if you're sure pacman is not already running, you
can remove /tmp/pacman.lck

Fixed. See #2205