It was suggested to me that adding a GDB stacktrace would be helpful, so:
nirvana:/usr/src# gdb --args aptitude install sun-java5-bin/unstable sun-java5-j re/unstable
GNU gdb 6.4.90-debian
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i486-linux-gnu"...(no debugging symbols found)
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/tls/libthread_db.so.1".
(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/bin/aptitude install sun-java5-bin/unstable sun-java5-jre /unstable
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread -1480612160 (LWP 11612)]
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
Building tag database... Done
[New Thread -1532740688 (LWP 11615)]
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
gsfonts-x11 libltdl3 odbcinst1debian1 unixodbc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gsfonts-x11 libltdl3 odbcinst1debian1 sun-java5-bin sun-java5-jre
unixodbc
0 packages upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get
30.2MB of archives. After unpacking 84.5MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y
Writing extended state information... 1%
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
[Switching to Thread -1480612160 (LWP 11612)]
0xa7c6e203 in strlen () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
(gdb) backtrace
#0 0xa7c6e203 in strlen () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
#1 0xa7df7236 in std::string::compare () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#2 0x081d6dc7 in std::operator+<wchar_t, std::char_traits<wchar_t>, std::alloca tor<wchar_t> > ()
#3 0x081ed479 in std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator <char> >::basic_string<char*> ()
#4 0x08146552 in pkgSimulate::Policy::~Policy ()
#5 0x0812cb27 in OpTextProgress::~OpTextProgress ()
#6 0x08053a76 in ?? ()
#7 0xa7c14eb0 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
#8 0x080515e1 in ?? ()
(gdb)
HTH.
