I just found this issue with the raspian buster kernel:
It seems likely that a kernel update might resolve this issue and this one:
https://forum.gitea.com/t/seg-fault-on-dietpi-buster/1593/4
Until the new kernel is available via apt, running the binary via gdb seems to avoid the issue due to different memory handling. I was able to succesfully upgrade to 1.5.3 with gdb and will see if incremental updates will continue to work up to 1.9.4.
If using the installaton as described here: docs.gitea .io/en-us/install-from-binary :
gdb --args gitea web -c /etc/gitea/app.ini
> set cwd /var/lib/gitea
> set environment HOME /home/git
> set environment GITEA_WORK_DIR /var/lib/gitea
> run