diff --git a/src/unix.rs b/src/unix.rs
index d69ae88..5011caa 100644
--- a/src/unix.rs
+++ b/src/unix.rs
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@ pub struct Acquired {
 impl Client {
     pub fn new(limit: usize) -> io::Result<Client> {
         let client = unsafe { Client::mk()? };
+        client.configure_capacity(limit)?;
         // I don't think the character written here matters, but I could be
         // wrong!
         for _ in 0..limit {
@@ -63,6 +64,70 @@ impl Client {
         Ok(Client::from_fds(pipes[0], pipes[1]))
     }
 
+    fn configure_capacity(&self, required_capacity: usize) -> io::Result<()> {
+        // On Linux we may need to increase the capacity of the pipe for the
+        // jobserver to work correctly. Linux seems to exhibit behavior where it
+        // implements a ring-buffer internally but apparently the ring-ness of
+        // the ring-buffer is connected to *pages* of the ring buffer rather
+        // than actual bytes of the ring buffer. This means that if the pipe has
+        // only one page of capacity we can hit a possible deadlock situation
+        // where a bunch of threads are writing to the pipe but they're all
+        // blocked, despite the current used capacity of the pipe being less
+        // than a page.
+        //
+        // This was first discovered in rust-lang/cargo#9739 where a system with
+        // a large amount of concurrency would hang in `cargo build` when the
+        // jobserver pipe only had one page of capacity. This was reduced to a
+        // reproduction program [1] which indeed showed that the system would
+        // deadlock if the capacity of the pipe was just one page.
+        //
+        // To fix this issue, on Linux only, we may increase the capacity of the
+        // pipe. The main thing here is that if the capacity of the pipe is a
+        // single page we try to increase it to two pages, otherwise we fail
+        // because a deadlock might happen. While we're at it this goes ahead
+        // and factors in the `required_capacity` requested by the client to
+        // this calculation as well. If for some reason you want 10_000 units of
+        // concurrency in the pipe that means we'll need more than 2 pages
+        // (typically 8192 bytes), so we round that up to 3 pages as well.
+        //
+        // Someone with more understanding of linux pipes and how they buffer
+        // internally should probably review this at some point. The exact cause
+        // of the deadlock seems a little uncertain and it's not clear why the
+        // example program [1] deadlocks and why simply adding another page
+        // fixes things. Is this a kernel bug? Do we need to always guarantee at
+        // least one free page? I'm not sure! Hopefully for now this is enough
+        // to fix the problem until machines start having more than 4k cores,
+        // which seems like it might be awhile.
+        //
+        // [1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/9739#issuecomment-889183009
+        #[cfg(target_os = "linux")]
+        unsafe {
+            let page_size = libc::sysconf(libc::_SC_PAGESIZE);
+            let actual_capacity = cvt(libc::fcntl(self.write.as_raw_fd(), libc::F_GETPIPE_SZ))?;
+
+            if let Some(c) = calculate_capacity(
+                required_capacity,
+                actual_capacity as usize,
+                page_size as usize,
+            ) {
+                cvt(libc::fcntl(self.write.as_raw_fd(), libc::F_SETPIPE_SZ, c)).map_err(|e| {
+                    io::Error::new(
+                        e.kind(),
+                        format!(
+                            "failed to increase jobserver pipe capacity from {} to {}; \
+                             jobserver otherwise might deadlock",
+                            actual_capacity, c,
+                        ),
+                    )
+
+                    // ...
+                })?;
+            }
+        }
+
+        Ok(())
+    }
+
     pub unsafe fn open(s: &str) -> Option<Client> {
         let mut parts = s.splitn(2, ',');
         let read = parts.next().unwrap();
@@ -337,3 +402,44 @@ extern "C" fn sigusr1_handler(
 ) {
     // nothing to do
 }
+
+#[allow(dead_code)]
+fn calculate_capacity(
+    required_capacity: usize,
+    actual_capacity: usize,
+    page_size: usize,
+) -> Option<usize> {
+    if actual_capacity < required_capacity {
+        let mut rounded_capacity = round_up_to(required_capacity, page_size);
+        if rounded_capacity < page_size * 2 {
+            rounded_capacity += page_size;
+        }
+        return Some(rounded_capacity);
+    }
+
+    if actual_capacity <= page_size {
+        return Some(page_size * 2);
+    }
+
+    return None;
+
+    fn round_up_to(a: usize, b: usize) -> usize {
+        assert!(b.is_power_of_two());
+        (a + (b - 1)) & (!(b - 1))
+    }
+}
+
+#[cfg(test)]
+mod tests {
+    use super::calculate_capacity;
+
+    #[test]
+    fn test_calculate_capacity() {
+        assert_eq!(calculate_capacity(1, 65536, 4096), None);
+        assert_eq!(calculate_capacity(500, 65536, 4096), None);
+        assert_eq!(calculate_capacity(5000, 4096, 4096), Some(8192));
+        assert_eq!(calculate_capacity(1, 4096, 4096), Some(8192));
+        assert_eq!(calculate_capacity(4096, 4096, 4096), Some(8192));
+        assert_eq!(calculate_capacity(8192, 4096, 4096), Some(8192));
+    }
+}
diff --git a/tests/server.rs b/tests/server.rs
index fcdd12c..0194e91 100644
--- a/tests/server.rs
+++ b/tests/server.rs
@@ -156,3 +156,25 @@ fn zero_client() {
         assert!(rx.try_recv().is_err());
     }
 }
+
+#[test]
+fn highly_concurrent() {
+    const N: usize = 10000;
+
+    let client = t!(Client::new(80));
+
+    let threads = (0..80)
+        .map(|_| {
+            let client = client.clone();
+            std::thread::spawn(move || {
+                for _ in 0..N {
+                    drop(client.acquire().unwrap());
+                }
+            })
+        })
+        .collect::<Vec<_>>();
+
+    for t in threads {
+        t.join().unwrap();
+    }
+}