PHP Composer update “cannot allocate memory” error (using Laravel 4)

Question

I just can\'t solve this one.

I\'m on Linode 1G RAM basic plan. Trying to install a package via Composer and it\'s not letting me. My memory limit is set to \"-1\" o

Answer 1

I increased the PHP memory_limit from the default 128M to 512M and restart the server. That solved the problem.

Answer 2

I solved the same problem in Vagrant. I increased the value of memory_limit and delete composer cache: sudo rm -R ~/.composer and finally vagrant reload.

Answer 3

Here are the steps to fix the problem: (instant fast SWAP file allocation method used)

Server SWAP Setup (Ubuntu 16.04 SWAP to Fix Out of Memory Errors)

Check if you have swap already, memory and disk size:

    sudo swapon -s
    free -m
    df -h

Make swap file: (change 1G to 4G if you want 4GB SWAP memory)

    sudo fallocate -l 1G /swapfile 

Check swap file:

    ls -lh /swapfile

Assign Swap File:

    sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
    sudo mkswap /swapfile
    sudo swapon /swapfile

Check if swap OK, memory and disk size:

    sudo swapon -s
    free -m
    df -h

Attach Swap File on System Restart:

    sudo nano /etc/fstab
        /swapfile   none    swap    sw    0   0

Adjust Swap File Settings:

    cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
    cat /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure

    sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10
    sudo sysctl vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

    sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

SWAP File Priority: (0-100% => 0: Don't put to swap, 100: Put on SWAP and free the RAM)

        vm.swappiness=10

Remove inode from cache: (100: system removes inode information from the cache too quickly)

        vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50

Answer 4

Here is the workaround that I found that works for me every time:

df -h 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=1024
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=1024
mkswap /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo 'echo "/swapfile  none  swap  defaults  0  0" >> /etc/fstab' | sudo sh

free -m

confirm u see your swap there:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 494 335 158 0 19 62
-/+ buffers/cache: 254 240
Swap: 1023 3 1020

watch free -m

Answer 5

have same problem with php composer.phar update on my 512mb hosting.

solved with php composer.phar install

Answer 6

I have faced the same issue. I am on a AWS Free Microinstance which has less memory. I always try one of the below options and it always works (Before all this please check if you have the latest version of composer installed)

sudo php -dmemory_limit=750M composer.phar update

or remove the contents of the vendor folder and try composer update.

sudo rm -rf vendor
sudo php -dmemory_limit=750M composer.phar update --no-scripts --prefer-dist
sudo php artisan --dump-autoload

The second option tries to update all the components, if there is no update, it picks up the package from the cache else picks up from the dist

Note: Please change the memory limit as per your choice.

or

Create a swap partition and try. Swap partition is the portion of the hard drive that linux uses as virtual memory when it runs out of physical memory. It's similar to the windows swap file only instead of using an actual file, linux uses a partition on the hard drive instead.

Hope this helps