Unaligned accesses (see: [1]) are bad. To find the source of unaligned accesses, use sys-apps/prctl and the instructions here [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmentation_fault#Bus_error [2] http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/IA64wiki/UnalignedAccesses No comments here. This is simply a tracker bug.
the kernel on these arches should automatically fixup unaligned access so the code at least works (albeit at a performance penalty). if they dont, i'd say that's a bad kernel config. (i dont mind fixing up unaligned programs, but it shouldnt take priority over "real" bugs imo)
By default (is there some way to change this?) on MIPS and SPARC, unaligned accesses cause SIGBUS. I know other architectures trap unaligned accesses and handle them in the kernel.