I suppose it doesn't matter much with SETI@home ending at the end of the month, I'm mostly posting for reference.

Setiathome v8.04 (stock app) crashes on a Debian stable box with "SIGSEGV: segmentation violation". See the task in question.

The error actually comes from vsyscall being forbidden in recent Linux kernels for security reasons. Indeed, the kernel message is more explicit:

setiathome_8.04[10957] vsyscall attempted with vsyscall=none ip:ffffffffff600000 cs:33 sp:7ffcbd24f948 ax:ffffffffff600000 si:0 di:7ffcbd24f960

It's a known problem which can be mitigated if the cruncher reboots with the vsyscall=emulate kernel option, but it lowers the computer's security (a bit). The actual long-term solution would be on the project side, to rebuild the app against a newer libc.

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Gazing at the skies, hoping for contact... Unlikely, but it would be such a fantastic opportunity to learn.

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