* 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.