Question, do you use virtualbox ?
Actually, I did have the same problem after upgrading from Ubuntu 13.10 to Ubuntu14.04 using virtualbox4.3.10. The faulty library where crash occurs is libtar that vlc uses to open up a skin. This issue seems to be specific to Ubuntu 14.04.Tests with older Ubuntus and Fedora 20 show no such problem.
In debug mode, this seems to be related to SSE2. I suspect for some reason, Ubuntu is mistaken when running inside a Virtualbox machine. I don't know whether it is a bug with Ubuntu or virtualbox not properly advertsing CPU capabilities. Not much can be done at the vlc level.
Code: Select all
(gdb) bt
#0 __strlen_sse2_bsf ()
at ../sysdeps/i386/i686/multiarch/strlen-sse2-bsf.S:50
#1 0xb75b044e in mkdirhier () from /usr/lib/libtar.so.0
#2 0xb75aeb6e in tar_extract_dir () from /usr/lib/libtar.so.0
#3 0xb75aeddc in tar_extract_file () from /usr/lib/libtar.so.0
#4 0xb75b0958 in tar_extract_all () from /usr/lib/libtar.so.0
#5 0xb2423c4b in ThemeLoader::extractTarGz (this=this@entry=0xb2150628,
tarFile=..., rootDir=...)
at ../../../../modules/gui/skins2/src/theme_loader.cpp:121