We are trying to build python on a HP-UX 11.00 using gcc
3.1. But when it  comes to the stage when it tries to
load _tkinter i.e. 
   import _tkinter
python dumps core.

running gdb on the core file gives us that it get's a
segfault on the line Python/import.c:210 i.e 
	if (interp->modules == NULL)
and yes, interp is null...
any clue how to continue?

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Things like this are notoriously hard to debug.

Perhaps GCC 3.1 has a bug (it's rather new, and HP-UX is an
infrequently used platform for this compiler).

Could you try with an older GCC version? I don't think I've
seen this report before.

Are there problems with any other modules? Does the test
suite run successfully?

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I would recommend to trace the value of
_PyThreadState_Current, perhaps by adding printfs every time
this variable changes, and is accessed.

I think it is impossible to create a thread state that has a
NULL interp, so when you find that the thread state is the
same all the time, you should then try to find out where
->interp is cleared (do you have watchpoints in gdb on HP-UX?)

Somebody might be overwriting memory.

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We don't have any previous GCC, 2.9x-series didn't like
HP-UX 11 very much.

But to begin with I'll compile GCC 3.2 for it and see if
that makes any difference.

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There was a delay before we could continue with this.  Now
when we returned to it, we decided to try GCC 3.2, since you
mentioned potential GCC 3.1 errors.  We also upgraded tk to
8.3.3.  After that, things works. :-)

From our point of view the problem is solved, even if we
never found what the precise error was.

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OK, closing.