linux - make -j 8 g++: internal compiler error: Killed (program cc1plus)

Question

When I deploy Apache Mesos on Ubuntu12.04, I follow the official document, in step "make -j 8" I'm getting this error in the console:

g++: internal compiler error: Killed (program cc1plus)
Please submit a full bug report,
with preprocessed source if appropriate.
See <file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-4.9/README.Bugs> for instructions.
make[2]: *** [slave/containerizer/mesos/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-containerizer.lo] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
mv -f log/.deps/liblog_la-log.Tpo log/.deps/liblog_la-log.Plo
mv -f slave/containerizer/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-docker.Tpo slave/containerizer/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-docker.Plo
mv -f log/.deps/liblog_la-consensus.Tpo log/.deps/liblog_la-consensus.Plo

mv -f slave/containerizer/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-external_containerizer.Tpo slave/containerizer/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-external_containerizer.Plo
mv -f log/.deps/liblog_la-coordinator.Tpo log/.deps/liblog_la-coordinator.Plo
mv -f slave/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-slave.Tpo slave/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-slave.Plo
mv -f master/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-master.Tpo master/.deps/libmesos_no_3rdparty_la-master.Plo
make[2]: Leaving directory `/root/Mesos/mesos/build/src'
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/Mesos/mesos/build/src'
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

what should I do?

Answer 1

Try running (just after the failure) dmesg.

Do you see a line like this?

Out of memory: Kill process 23747 (cc1plus) score 15 or sacrifice child
Killed process 23747, UID 2243, (cc1plus) total-vm:214456kB, anon-rss:178936kB, file-rss:5908kB

Most likely that is your problem. Running make -j 8 runs lots of process which use more memory. The problem above occurs when your system runs out of memory. In this case rather than the whole system falling over, the operating systems runs a process to score each process on the system. The one that scores the highest gets killed by the operating system to free up memory. If the process that is killed is cc1plus, gcc (perhaps incorrectly) interprets this as the process crashing and hence assumes that it must be a compiler bug. But it isn't really, the problem is the OS killed cc1plus, rather than it crashed.

If this is the case, you are running out of memory. So run perhaps make -j 4 instead. This will mean fewer parallel jobs and will mean the compilation will take longer but hopefully will not exhaust your system memory.