The problem

You compile a program, e.g. with configure, rpmbuild or directly with make. The compilation aborts with the following error:

xgcc: Internal error: Killed (program cc1)

The cause

During the compilation the program cc1 crashed. The cause of the crash can theoretically be of different types – a programming error in the compiler, for example. However, this latter is extremely rare. Much more common is a lack of main memory.

The solution

There are several ways of working around this problem:

  • You give your computer more physical memory.

  • You add additional swap space, e.g. in the form of a swap file.
  • You compile on a computer with more memory.
  • If your compilation computer is a Xen domain, you configure more memory for it.

Linux knowledge

These articles were written by the founder of Checkmk many years ago.
They are still valid though and thus we keep them on our website.
Mathias has since then developed a monitoring software called Checkmk

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