I have filed a bug report "Building Python 2.4.3 on Solaris 9/10 with Sun Studio 11" 1496561 in the Python tracker. The problem I have encountered is, that some of the unit tests of the application roundup fail with Python producing a segmentation fault and dumping core, if Python was build with Sun Studio 11 (Sun C 5.8). In fact not only some of the unit tests fail, but also the application roundup at certain steps. If gcc is used, everything works fine. As Richard Jones suggests, it might be a problem in the anydbm module. I would rather prefer to use the native compiler of a platform. To name only two reason, distributing the application is easier (dynamic library dependencies are most likely met on the target system) and Sun is maintaining the reference native libraries. Help would be appreciated, thanks Andreas