faulthandler is an handler for SIGSEGV, SIGFPE, SIGBUS and SIGILL signals: display the Python backtrace on a crash. Just import the module to enable it. https://github.com/haypo/faulthandler/wiki http://pypi.python.org/pypi/faulthandler/ It works on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD with Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.1 and 3.2. I should work with Python 2.5 and on other OSes. Tell me if the module works on your OS / Python version. Dummy example of a segmentation fault on Linux: $ python >>> import faulthandler >>> faulthandler.isenabled() True >>> faulthandler.sigsegv() Fatal Python error: Segmentation fault Traceback (most recent call first): File "<stdin>", line 1 in <module> Segmentation fault Victor Stinner