On a Dell Inspiron 5000, using the apm command causes a segmentation fault.
Works for me without problems on a Gericom 3xC... What do you get when you run strace apm ?
Created attachment 1994 [details] Attached is output of "strace apm".
so, what was the solution?
Please check 'dmesg' output after the segmentation fault and attach any oops
Looks like a broken APM bios... If it's a bug at all (I don't think it is), it's a kernel problem.
I'm deferring this until we get the information Alan requested.