> > Program received signal SIGSEGV (11), Segmentation fault
> > 0x0 in _DYNAMIC ()
> > (gdb) 
> > 
> 
> Most probably you are severely overwriting your stack. For instance,
> an out-of-bounds bzero() on an automatic variable would do this trick.
 
Yes it was the stack being hosed.  I stepped through the routine in
question and found the bits of its lib that needed initialization
(what you get for splitting functionality accross multiple processes -
all works fine in one but...)

--sjg