Emulation

I've been using MAME for years, but I only tried using it for software list titles today. It isn't working and I'm beyond frustrated right now. This is what I've done, does anyone see what I've done wrong?

1. Software list roms are in their own directory which is correctly added to rompath in mame.ini. The structure is /home/xkoe/Remote/Mame/sl//.zip.
2. I have the software list datfiles in /home/xkoe/Games/Mame/.mame/hash/.xml.
3. I tried auditing everything via the mame ui.

I guess that's it. My roms (main and software list) are fully up-to-date, as is MAME itself as well as the datfiles. The datfiles are for the correct set (merged). If I attempt to open a rom (mame - ) MAME closes with a segmentation fault. If I remove the path to the hash directory in mame.ini it doesn't find the rom. If I give the complete filepath instead of just the romfile it opens and runs perfectly.

I'm prepared to have this be something stupid like a typo somewhere in my ini file, but so far I haven't found anything. If anyone has any thoughts please let me know!