Executing "bitbake -g -u depexp <package>" in the Yocto build server connected through SSH resulted in Segfault. We can re-create the same scenario in local machine with these steps:  

$ cd poky
$ source oe-init-build-env
$ unset DISPLAY
$ bitbake -g -u depexp python
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Even-though, the program seems to be segfaulted, this creates a number of background processes which continues to run:

$ ps ax|grep python
12074 pts/0    Dl     7:52 python /home/maxin/poky/bitbake/bin/bitbake -g -u depexp python
12729 pts/0    Dl     3:08 python /home/maxin/poky/bitbake/bin/bitbake -g -u depexp python
12733 pts/0    Z      0:00 [python] <defunct>
12735 pts/0    Sl     0:58 python /home/maxin/poky/bitbake/bin/bitbake -g -u depexp python
12736 pts/0    Sl     0:58 python /home/maxin/poky/bitbake/bin/bitbake -g -u depexp python
12737 pts/0    Sl     0:58 python /home/maxin/poky/bitbake/bin/bitbake -g -u depexp python
12738 pts/0    Sl     0:59 python /home/maxin/poky/bitbake/bin/bitbake -g -u depexp python


While trying to debug the segfault, I have executed this command a number of times in the server and that unintentionally consumed a lot of memory which kicked the OOM killer. That virtually took the server down as it killed the ssh server.

(This script can start the OOM killer in my i7 machine as a normal user)

#!/bin/bash
for i in {1..50}
do
    rm bitbake.lock
    bitbake -g -u depexp python
done