util: Work around (virtual) memory exhaustion on 32-bit w/ glibc

glibc-specific: On 32-bit systems set the number of arenas to 1. By
default, since glibc 2.10, the C library will create up to two heap
arenas per core. This is known to cause excessive virtual address space
usage in our usage. Work around it by setting the maximum number of
arenas to 1.

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/util.cpp b/src/util.cpp
index 486df772f..a997199fb 100644
--- a/src/util.cpp
+++ b/src/util.cpp
@@ -72,6 +72,10 @@
 #include <sys/prctl.h>
 #endif
 
+#ifdef HAVE_MALLOPT_ARENA_MAX
+#include <malloc.h>
+#endif
+
 #include <boost/algorithm/string/case_conv.hpp> // for to_lower()
 #include <boost/algorithm/string/join.hpp>
 #include <boost/algorithm/string/predicate.hpp> // for startswith() and endswith()
@@ -792,6 +796,16 @@ void RenameThread(const char* name)
 
 void SetupEnvironment()
 {
+#ifdef HAVE_MALLOPT_ARENA_MAX
+    // glibc-specific: On 32-bit systems set the number of arenas to 1.
+    // By default, since glibc 2.10, the C library will create up to two heap
+    // arenas per core. This is known to cause excessive virtual address space
+    // usage in our usage. Work around it by setting the maximum number of
+    // arenas to 1.
+    if (sizeof(void*) == 4) {
+        mallopt(M_ARENA_MAX, 1);
+    }
+#endif
     // On most POSIX systems (e.g. Linux, but not BSD) the environment's locale
     // may be invalid, in which case the "C" locale is used as fallback.
 #if !defined(WIN32) && !defined(MAC_OSX) && !defined(__FreeBSD__) && !defined(__OpenBSD__)