What is a 'segfault error'

Player crashed while sync was in progress today. Could not sync music. When i unplugged the player and attempted to restart, it gave me 'segfault error' and 'sigkill error' when begining to boot.

Advise.

* EDIT *

Ok, after several reboots I have the player attempting to rebuild it's database. Can someone give me a link to the FAQ where it describes how to force the player to rebuild the database manually instead of using Emplode. I've had to use this a few time on this particular player , so it's not unusuall I'd have to do it again.

Manual database rebuilds are detailed in the first hit on this FAQ search on "rebuild database manually".

A segmentation fault is a serious software program crash. It often, but not always, indicates some kind of a hardware error on the player.

I used to get that on one of my players where the header for the hard drive needed to be re-soldered.

thank you, i was just going to ask what type of hardware problems would cause this.

I'm going to swap the drives into one of my standby players and try to resolve the database thing first. Then I'll see what I can do to fix the problem on the original.

Database errors are also a common cause of segfaults.

And hard disk trouble, including cable problems and headers that need resoldering, are a common cause of database errors.

I'm guessing it was a problem with a loose or partially corroded HD cable. I swapped the drives into a standby player I had, but then put the standby drives into the player that was giving the segfault error. Both players are working properly now and I was able to rebuild the databases by just re-syncing with Emplode.

So at this point unplugging the IDE cable and reconnecting it has at least temporarily fixed the problem.

Sometimes that means it was an issue with the cable, sometimes it means you just wiggled the IDE header and the cracked solder joints are touching for now, but will come undone again later. Carefully check the IDE headers.