I believe you can override libc's malloc by passing in LD_PRELOAD, at which point you've got the basic building blocks to test malloc failure if you can find a

I believe you can override libc's malloc by passing in LD_PRELOAD, at which point you've got the basic building blocks to test malloc failure if you can find a way to tell your malloc call apart from the others. Having said that, I don't disagree with your choice, because messing with LD_PRELOAD is difficult, scary, and probably overkill anyway.