diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index b90674118c5..03911bb7f30 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -854,7 +854,7 @@ OPAL_SEARCH_LIBS_CORE([ceil], [m])
 # -lrt might be needed for clock_gettime
 OPAL_SEARCH_LIBS_CORE([clock_gettime], [rt])
 
-AC_CHECK_FUNCS([asprintf snprintf vasprintf vsnprintf openpty isatty getpwuid fork waitpid execve pipe ptsname setsid mmap tcgetpgrp posix_memalign strsignal sysconf syslog vsyslog regcmp regexec regfree _NSGetEnviron socketpair strncpy_s usleep mkfifo dbopen dbm_open statfs statvfs setpgid setenv])
+AC_CHECK_FUNCS([asprintf snprintf vasprintf vsnprintf openpty isatty getpwuid fork waitpid execve pipe ptsname setsid mmap tcgetpgrp posix_memalign strsignal sysconf syslog vsyslog regcmp regexec regfree _NSGetEnviron socketpair strncpy_s usleep mkfifo dbopen dbm_open statfs statvfs setpgid setenv __malloc_initialize_hook])
 
 # Sanity check: ensure that we got at least one of statfs or statvfs.
 if test $ac_cv_func_statfs = no && test $ac_cv_func_statvfs = no; then
diff --git a/ompi/runtime/ompi_mpi_init.c b/ompi/runtime/ompi_mpi_init.c
index 56169924561..286ee2b33f8 100644
--- a/ompi/runtime/ompi_mpi_init.c
+++ b/ompi/runtime/ompi_mpi_init.c
@@ -99,6 +99,8 @@
 #endif
 #include "ompi/runtime/ompi_cr.h"
 
+/* newer versions of gcc have poisoned this deprecated feature */
+#if HAVE___MALLOC_INITIALIZE_HOOK
 #include "opal/mca/memory/base/base.h"
 /* So this sucks, but with OPAL in its own library that is brought in
    implicity from libmpi, there are times when the malloc initialize
@@ -106,6 +108,7 @@
    from here, since any MPI code is going to call MPI_Init... */
 OPAL_DECLSPEC void (*__malloc_initialize_hook) (void) =
     opal_memory_base_malloc_init_hook;
+#endif
 
 /* This is required for the boundaries of the hash tables used to store
  * the F90 types returned by the MPI_Type_create_f90_XXX functions.