diff --git a/pkgs/tools/misc/coreutils/default.nix b/pkgs/tools/misc/coreutils/default.nix
index e5f9eb1be2c..b0dbb049cbf 100644
--- a/pkgs/tools/misc/coreutils/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/tools/misc/coreutils/default.nix
@@ -58,7 +58,9 @@ let
     # and {Open,Free}BSD.
     doCheck = stdenv ? glibc;
 
-    enableParallelBuilding = true;
+    # Saw random failures like ‘help2man: can't get '--help' info from
+    # man/sha512sum.td/sha512sum’.
+    enableParallelBuilding = false;
 
     NIX_LDFLAGS = optionalString selinuxSupport "-lsepol";