Unfortunately, Segmentation fault Matomo (Piwik) errors mean that the lower level software has crashed in some unexpected fashion. In this case, most likely PHP or some of its specific modules (PDO, mysqli, etc.). It is possible to overcome this issue by updating these softwares.
If you get the Segmentation fault error, the solution is to:

  • Upgrade Matomo and make sure to use the latest version
  • upgrade PHP to the latest version
  • upgrade PDO (and/or mysqli) to the latest version.
  • you may also try to switch from PDO_MYSQL to MYSQLI in the config/config.ini.php ; edit the line “adapter = […]”
  • if you still get the error, try disabling extensions such as eAccelerator, xcache and/or Suhosin, if you are using one of them.
  • if you still get the segmentation fault error at this point, try the suggestion in this issue (if it works for you, please post a comment in this issue).

You should now have a working Matomo instance that does not crash, congratulations.

Previous FAQ: I get the error message: “Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required XYZ in /path/piwik/XYZ.php on line X”. How can I get Matomo to work?