So the problem seems to be related to the GUI libraries for me. I am not much help at diagnosing more than that. I am happy to try running any commands people thing would help lead to a diagnosis. The problem seems to be very repeatable for me at present.
Further diagnostic suggestions were to try:
$ octave --norc
octave exited with signal 6
$ octave --no-gui-libs
GNU Octave, version 4.2.2
$ octave-cli
GNU Octave, version 4.2.2
So the problem seems to be related to the GUI libraries for me. I am not much help at diagnosing more than that. I am happy to try running any commands people thing would help lead to a diagnosis. The problem seems to be very repeatable for me at present.