diff --git a/colord.spec b/colord.spec
index 3b59ee8..4ab9e63 100644
--- a/colord.spec
+++ b/colord.spec
@@ -74,6 +74,10 @@ This may be useful for CMYK soft-proofing or for extra device support.
 %setup -q
 
 %build
+# Set ~2 GiB limit so that colprof is forced to work in chunks when
+# generating the print profile rather than trying to allocate a 3.1 GiB
+# chunk of RAM to put the entire B-to-A tables in.
+ulimit -Sv 2000000
 %configure \
         --with-daemon-user=colord \
         --enable-gtk-doc \