Segmentation faults using threads

[Mathias]

> 
>     What module are you using for SSH?
> 
>     What's in your program that isn't pure Python?
> The problem is probably in some non-Python component; you shouldn't
> be able to force a memory protection error from within Python code.
> 

It looks like the error could be in scipy/Numeric, when a large array's 
type is changed, like this:

 >>> from scipy import *
 >>> a=zeros(100000000,'b')	#100 MiB
 >>> b=a.copy().astype('d')      #800 MiB, ok
 >>> a=zeros(1000000000,'b')	#1GiB
 >>> b=a.copy().astype('d')      #8GiB, fails with sf
Segmentation fault

if I use zeros directly for allocation of the doubles it works as expected:

 >>> from scipy import *
 >>> a=zeros(1000000000,'d')	#8GiB, fails with python exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
MemoryError: can't allocate memory for array
 >>>

I use python 2.4, but my scipy and Numeric aren't quite up-to-date: 
scipy version 0.3.2, Numeric v 24.2