emacs crashes when set-face-attribute is set in .emacs

[woodmood]

Binary package hint: emacs-snapshot

this is in one of the emacs-snapshot* packages, my version is "1:20080228-1ubuntu1"; i have emacs-snapshot-gtk installed.

setup:
.emacs is empty, containing only the following line
(set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 88)

steps to reproduce:
1) from gnome, start emacs using the terminal:
emacs

2) hover the mouse over the buffer's name

expected outcome:
a tooltip pops up

actual outcome:
emacs crashes with
Fatal error (6)Aborted

This also happens in bunch of other situations when mouse is used t.

The ubuntu release is:
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.2
Release: 8.04