Bug#972510: glibc: Please ignore misc/tst-sbrk and/or misc/tst-sbrk-pie on all archs
* Aurelien Jarno:
> brk/sbrk is definitely something deprecated. But it is still part of the
> API (especially for old architectures) and still used by software like
> jemalloc, gcl or libgc. This is therefore important to keep this feature
> in a good shape.
>
> It's also used by many less important packages, often just to print a
> backtrace.
>
> If someone has spoons it might be worth opening bugs again those
> package, so that they stop using brk/sbrk.
glibc malloc also uses sbrk, and has some glitches in corner cases
when it has to switch from sbrk to mmap for the main arena.
I think it is worth investigating *why* sbrk fails. Usually that is
due to an obstructing mapping caused by problematic address space
layouts. With ASLR, such failures can essentially appear to be
random.
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