After communicating with the upstream authour, I removed ~/.fpm/fpm.ini and restarted fpm2 successfully. The fpm.ini was from a previous version of the package or from fpm. I am not sure. I had used squeeze version of fpm around December 12, 2010 and then upgraded about January 4, 2011. I have been using fpm for years and likely carried the fpm.ini from a backup. Not sure of dates and versions because they were on two computers at two locations.
Likely some version information in fpm.ini or more graceful error-reporting/analysis would eliminate the segfault. -- Robert Pogson Have server, will travel...