How to catch data-alignment faults on x86 (aka SIGBUS on Sparc)

Question

Is it somehow possible to catch data-alignment faults even on i386? Maybe by setting a i386 specific machine register or something like that.

On Solaris-Sparc I am r

Answer 1

I have found a very simple solution on SOF! See: Mis-aligned pointers on x86.

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
# if defined i386
    /* EDIT: enable AC check */
    asm("pushf; "
    "orl $(1<<18), (%esp); "
    "popf;");
# endif

    char d[] = "12345678";  /* yep! - causes SIGBUS even on Linux-i386 */
    return 0;
}

But I must confess that I do not understand why the assignment

char d[] = "12345678";

is assumed to be mis-aligned?

EDIT:

on the SPARC machine there is no SIGBUS on the line of assignment to char d[].