I had the same problem. I wanted to debug it so i downloaded the source (debian unstable), compiled it with CFLAGS="-g" and started it in gdb.
Then it worked fine. The result of dpkg-buildpackage did not work, must be because it is stripped. So it could be a compiler issue or a timing problem. I was working on a dumped image on a new disk, and swapping RAM made no difference, so I do not think hardware problems was involved. -- Niels Elgaard Larsen