Thanks for looking into this.  All I need to do to trigger the problem
is to run paraview.  However, it seems to depend on the details of the
Linux installation -- system libraries, I suppose.

On this system it works:

Mandriva Linux release 2010.1 (Official) for x86_64
Linux cosmos.phy.tufts.edu 2.6.33.7-server-2mnb #1 SMP Mon Sep 20 19:01:10 UTC 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Whereas on this one it crashes:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client release 5.5 (Tikanga)
Linux node12 2.6.18-194.17.4.el5 #1 SMP Wed Oct 20 13:03:08 EDT 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

These two systems are both running the exact same 3.8.1 x86_64 executable
that I downloaded.

I attach my Xwin.0.log showing the crash.

                                        Ken