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" on PHP.ini

Is there anything else I can do to get this installed?

Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
  - Installing thujohn/rss (dev-master df80a7d)
    Downloading: 100%         
PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught exception 'ErrorException' with message 'proc_open(): fork failed - Cannot allocate memory' in phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php:975
Stack trace:
#0 [internal function]: Composer\Util\ErrorHandler::handle(2, 'proc_open(): fo...', 'phar:///usr/loc...', 975, Array)
#1 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(975): proc_open('stty -a | grep ...', Array, NULL, NULL, NULL, Array)
#2 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(853): Symfony\Component\Console\Application->getSttyColumns()
#3 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(818): Symfony\Component\Console\Application->getTerminalDimensions()
#4 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(752): Symfony\Component\Console\Application->getTerminalWidth()
#5 phar:///usr/local/bin/com in phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php on line 975

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'ErrorException' with message 'proc_open(): fork failed - Cannot allocate memory' in phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php:975
Stack trace:
#0 [internal function]: Composer\Util\ErrorHandler::handle(2, 'proc_open(): fo...', 'phar:///usr/loc...', 975, Array)
#1 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(975): proc_open('stty -a | grep ...', Array, NULL, NULL, NULL, Array)
#2 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(853): Symfony\Component\Console\Application->getSttyColumns()
#3 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(818): Symfony\Component\Console\Application->getTerminalDimensions()
#4 phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(752): Symfony\Component\Console\Application->getTerminalWidth()
#5 phar:///usr/local/bin/com in phar:///usr/local/bin/composer/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php on line 975

Solution 1

A bit old but just in case someone new is looking for a solution, updating your PHP version can fix the issue.

Also you should be committing your composer.lock file and doing a composer install on a production environment which is less resource intensive.

More details here: https://github.com/composer/composer/issues/1898#issuecomment-23453850

Solution 2

Looks like you runs out of swap memory, try this

/bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap.1 bs=1M count=1024
/sbin/mkswap /var/swap.1
/sbin/swapon /var/swap.1

as mentioned by @BlackBurn027 on comments below, this solution was described in here

Solution 3

As composer troubleshooting guide here This could be happening because the VPS runs out of memory and has no Swap space enabled.

free -m

To enable the swap you can use for example:

sudo /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap.1 bs=1M count=1024
sudo /sbin/mkswap /var/swap.1
sudo /sbin/swapon /var/swap.1

Or if above not worked then you can try create a swap file

sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile

Solution 4

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

Solution 5

Easy, type this commands:

rm -rf vendor/

rm -rf composer.lock

php composer install --prefer-dist

Should work for low memory machines

View more solutions

Comments

[ericbae]

yep. Funny thing is if I delete the whole project, do a fresh git pull and then do composer install, it seems to work. Strange.

[Makita]

Frustrating, I am deploying a few L4 projects to 1GB Linode instances and am now worried about hitting the memory ceiling.

[Makita]

An old link but may be of some use: github.com/composer/composer/issues/1104

[ericbae]

BRILLIANT! That worked. I didn't upgrade my PHP, but committing composer.lock file and updating installed all things properly. Thank you.

[devNoise]

I dropped the memory limit down to 500M and composer installed what I needed.

[Reese]

you can also use an actual swap file instead of a partition. see cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-add-a-swap-file-howto

[Makita]

The accepted answer is still the best way to go. You should commit composer.lock and then run an install instead of update on the production server.

[tristanbailey]

Had same problem on my Digital Ocean account even at 250M I also had to stop Apache and MySQL first before I could run it

[halkujabra]

Worked for me. I have written a comprehensive answer over here - stackoverflow.com/questions/26850332/…

[adelriosantiago]

Wowwow, posting the commands without explaining what they do is probably dangerous! Although I can definitively say it would work on most systems. Basically you are creating allocating Swap space so that the HD can be used as RAM. Here is a comprehensive guide on how to do that explaining each command: digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/…

[Goran]

Thank you for the clarification of the commands, it is nice to know what the script actually do before you execute it. But in the same way it is not nice how you are promoting digital ocean and your tutorial/blog post.

[Elias Kouskoumvekakis]

tristanbailey your solution worked, thanks! Before I stopped mysql and apache I couldn't update, even by setting the php memory limit.

[Croll]

You sir, are a genius - its not a php issue and removing files will no help. I have to follow your instructions (with sudo) on my VPS. This is the only one useful answer here for VPS owners.

[Jed]

This worked for me too and I didn't have to update my PHP. Thanks!

[Piusha]

This worked for me. With this solution I increased memory_limit from the default 128M to 512M

[acobster]

Solved this issue for me too. Note that in vagrant 2.x instead of vb.customize ... you can do vb.memory = 1024.

[Paul Preibisch]

this worked for me on AWS Opsworks EC2 Instance Ubuntu 14.04! Thanks!

[Vladimir Kovalchuk]

It's not working. And this deleted all my vendor folder. It's wrong!

[insign]

What is the problem delete the vendor? just run install/update again...

[BlackBurn027]

getcomposer.org/doc/articles/… as mentioned by the source

[Anunay]

that works for me without reinstalling the PHP. Thanks.

[Joseph Astrahan]

This worked for me but I'm confused what those commands are actually doing, can someone explain them?

[Niklaus]

This should be the first thing to try to fix the issue. I had problem with 1.3.3, self-update to 1.4.0 fixed the issue. Tip: you could update your answer to cover also cover the use-case of composer self-update, if someone not-so-familiar with composer is to read this reply.

[Kumar]

Late to the party, but I simply switched off Apache and MySQL. There is a reason I am using a 512MB RAM VPS, don't want to spend monies.

[HelpNeeder]

reboot shouldn't be needed as PHP doesn't runs as a service.

[Tarik]

The tutorial is great, showing step by step with explanations!

[Shauna]

Deleting vendor isn't entirely wrong, though it does break the site and keeps it in the broken state if the install still doesn't work. However, deleting the lock file on production machines is not advised. You should be committing your lock file and only installing, not updating. In fact, by deleting the lock file, you're forcing Composer to install from the json file, which is where the memory-intensive processes come from (determining which version of what to install).

[cj5]

Updating PHP is not a solution. I have 7.0.21, and still get this error.

[psylosss]

sometimes 1024 is not enough... Use 2048 instead

[Himanshu Upadhyay]

I had the same issue with my AWS EC2 with Ubuntu 16.04 with PHP 7.0.1 and your answer solved my problem. Kudos!!!

[Shadab K]

thanks alot without upgrading php5 to php7 this worked

[coder]

This happened to me on ec2 as well. T2 micro, AWS-Linux AMI

[Andrew]

get permission denied when rename occurs

[preyz]

I received a memory error while running “composer update” on as Raspberry Pi 3b+ and solved this by creating a swap like described above. Thanks a lot for this :-)

[Jaber Al Nahian]

But this solution goes away if I reboot Ubuntu 18. I am on AWS EC2 T3 Mini

[LuizEduardoMPF]

I'd already tried to switch off Apache and Mysql, but it didn't work. With this suggestion, it worked great!!! Thank you so much, it saved me.

[Mihail Minkov]

Excellent! From what I can see it basically creates/resizes the swap file right?

[Mohammed Omer]

@JaberAlNahian you can make a permanent swap please check here digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/…

[Nikit]

Thank you! You instructions help me to install Drupal Presto for 1GB RAM server. I have change 1024 to 2048.

[arhakim]

I don't know what I have to do on the last step sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf, So, I skip it then restart Nginx and then do composer install (previously I've removed the vendor directory) and it's working. Thanks!

[Amir Hajiha]

It gave the error again but running composer update after that worked fine.

[Bizarro]

It's ok to follow this if you are not in a production environment, since it will break the project until composer is done with the installation

[Eleazar Resendez]

I used free -m and noticed that I had no memory, not even in swap .. then did sudo reboot and it worked

[Nico Haase]

Please share more details on your answer - why should disabling "js bundling" help when an error occurs on downloading a package (which happens way before any scripts are run)

[Nico Haase]

Please add some explanation to your answer. Changing anything in .htaccess does not affect composer after all, as this is not run through a webserver

[Nico Haase]

Please add some explanation to your answer such that others can learn from it - especially: what have you changed comparing to the other answers that use the same approach? Is there any need to duplicate their answer?

[James Bridgewater]

@Kumar's solution worked for me. Super easy and like most things, obvious in hindsight :)

[Hossein Shahdoost]

I will be forever in your dept, If you ever came to Iran let me know, I will invite you to a lunch (btw don't come to iran it's dangerous)

[Varun Naharia]

When I run sudo php -dmemory_limit=750M composer.phar update I got this error Could not open input file: composer.phar please help

[JGCW]

Thanks a lot. Saved me a bunch of time.

[Dediqated]

No but Apache does and thus it should be restarted in order to take effect...

[Aris]

it is needed, as apache loads the php modules

[Thilina Dharmasena]

And you can check the [official document][2] getcomposer.org/doc/articles/…

[Yohanim]

this isn't php problem. you're really genius.

[temirbek]

how about docker container? should I do above as usual or should I first go to container bash?

[WHY]

Thanks a lot. This works for me. (Digital Ocean $10 Server)

[Oliver P]

Setting the swap is the best solution. If you just up the memory with php -dmemory_limit then you will still run out of memory if your machine doesn't have enough, there is no way around that apart from enabling swap.

[Sašo Kovačič]

As I know swap files are not good for SSD disks. It is better to increase memory_limit with the update command: run php -dmemory_limit=750M composer update --no-scripts --prefer-dist

[miken32]

Already suggested years ago. stackoverflow.com/a/32637848

[Evidoski]

@miken32 sorry, I can't find this answer on this question and that's why I posted it to help anyone encountering same issue

[Evidoski]

also @miken32 the command here stackoverflow.com/a/32637848 doesn't update to composer 2 as suggested in the composer article link posted above