BUG #8782: Segmentation Fault during initialization

The following bug has been logged on the website:

Bug reference: 8782
Logged by: Luke Campbell
Email address: lcampbell(at)asascience(dot)com
PostgreSQL version: 9.3.1
Operating system: Centos 6.5
Description:

While attempting to initialize the server as a "postgres" user with:

sudo -u postgres /opt/postgresql-9.3.1/bin/initdb /var/postgres

A segmentation fault occurred. Here's the stack trace from gdb:

#0 0x000000000085b246 in palloc (size=1024) at mcxt.c:647
647 CurrentMemoryContext->isReset = false;

(gdb) bt
#0 0x000000000085b246 in palloc (size=1024) at mcxt.c:647
#1 0x0000000000625750 in initStringInfo (str=0x7fff1c878c10) at
stringinfo.c:50
#2 0x0000000000837d5b in expand_fmt_string (fmt=0x9c51b0 "could not change
directory to \"%s\": %s", edata=0xc9d680) at elog.c:2886
#3 0x0000000000834e00 in elog_finish (elevel=15, fmt=0x9c51b0 "could not
change directory to \"%s\": %s") at elog.c:1288
#4 0x0000000000875796 in resolve_symlinks (path=0x7fff1c87a2e0
"/opt/postgresql-9.3.1/bin/postgres") at exec.c:293
#5 0x000000000087527f in find_my_exec (argv0=0x1989a60
"/opt/postgresql-9.3.1/bin/postgres", retpath=0x7fff1c87a2e0
"/opt/postgresql-9.3.1/bin/postgres") at exec.c:144
#6 0x0000000000875b1c in set_pglocale_pgservice (argv0=0x1989a60
"/opt/postgresql-9.3.1/bin/postgres", app=0x959448 "postgres-9.3") at
exec.c:561
#7 0x0000000000636a56 in main (argc=3, argv=0x1989a30) at main.c:

The server was compiled with:
$ CFLAGS=-ggdb PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python ./configure --enable-debug
--prefix=/opt/postgresql-9.3.1 --enable-thread-safety --with-gssapi
--with-openssl --with-libxml --with-libxslt --with-python

No errors during make or make install

Additional assessments, speculation and developer commentary can be found
at:
https://gist.github.com/lukecampbell/8363139

For more information or environment information please contact me at
lcampbell(at)asascience(dot)com

Thanks!