https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=66154
--- Comment #1 from Frank Heckenbach <f.heckenb...@fh-soft.de> --- Somehow this got sent before the text was inserted, so here goes: Also reported on Debian, but I was asked to report it here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=785249 When I tried to build gcc on Debian jessie from sources (debuild -us -uc), I got a number of errors like this: FAIL: g++.dg/asan/interception-malloc-test-1.C -O1 output pattern test, is ==25380==ERROR: AddressSanitizer failed to allocate 0xdfff0001000 (15392894357504) bytes at address 0x02008fff7000 (12) ==25380==ReserveShadowMemoryRange failed while trying to map 0xdfff0001000 bytes. Perhaps you're using ulimit -v , should match malloc call.*( | )[^ ]*heap-use-after-free In fact I wasn't using ulimit -v, but I had turned off memory overcommitting (sysctl: vm.overcommit_memory=2). Obviously I have less than 14 TB of RAM in my system. ;) After I turned it on, these errors disappeared. So I suggest: - If possible, amend the test to use a more reasonable allocation. Not sure what it's actually testing, but I wonder what I can do with 14 TB (which is way short of the 64 bit address range) that it couldn't do with, say 6 GB (larger than 32 bit range, in case that matters). Otherwise: - In the wording of the message, add "or have turned off memory overcommitting" as a possible reason, at least for Linux systems. - Verify [ `sysctl -n vm.overcommit_memory` -eq 0 ] early in the build process, so you don't get to see such errors after a long time building. Same for a ulimit check if there isn't one already.