Composer Cannot Allocate Memory

[digitalstartup]

Hi @duypham2991 and welcome.

I don’t recommend the use of memory_limit=-1

1. Check: Ensure you have enough available Memory

First, make sure your server has a minimum of 2GB of available Memory so that composer can be run without hanging (“out of memory”).

2. Option A: Upgrade

Upgrade server specs. As of July 2020, I’m now recommending 4G memory servers. If you upgrade your server, don’t forget to update your php.ini and .htaccess variables to take into account the new memory_limit.

3. Option B: Allocate a temporary swap file

If you do have a minimum of 2GB of available Memory, then try to allocate a temporary swap file.

@digitalstartup

Create yourself a swap-file for your VPS. This allocates some of your diskspace to help with machines will less RAM than is required. Simply run the following as root user, one step at a time:

1. fallocate -l 1G /swapfile
2. chmod 600 /swapfile
3. mkswap /swapfile
4. swapon /swapfile

4. Option C: Set memory_limit during command

I also like this one. Obviously, only set the memory_limit (4G) to whatever you have available in your environment:

php -d memory_limit=4G /usr/local/bin/composer command

Examples:

php -d memory_limit=4G /usr/local/bin/composer update

php -d memory_limit=4G /usr/local/bin/composer require example/example