Composer killed while updating

I got a problem, I tried to install a new package to my Laravel 4 project. But when I run php composer.phar update I get this:

Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Killed

I have looked for the problem in the Internet and saw that the memory is the problem, I think I don't have enough RAM available, I've checked this I have about 411mb free. Does composer really need more RAM?

The "Killed" message usually means your process consumed too much memory, so you may simply need to add more memory to your system if possible. At the time of writing this answer, I've had to increase my virtual machine's memory to at least 768MB in order to get composer update to work in some situations.

However, if you're doing this on a live server, you shouldn't be using composer update at all. What you should instead do is:

1. Run composer update in a local environment (such as directly on your physical laptop/desktop, or a docker container/VM running on your laptop/desktop) where memory limitations shouldn't be as severe.
2. Upload or git push the composer.lock file.
3. Run composer install on the live server.

composer install will then read from the .lock file, fetching the exact same versions every time rather than finding the latest versions of every package. This makes your app less likely to break, and composer uses less memory.

Read more here: https://getcomposer.org/doc/01-basic-usage.md#installing-with-composer-lock

Alternatively, you can upload the entire vendor directory to the server, bypassing the need to run composer install at all, but then you should run composer dump-autoload --optimize.

If like me, you are using some micro VM lacking of memory, creating a swap file does the trick:

#Check free memory before
free -m

mkdir -p /var/_swap_
cd /var/_swap_

#Here, 2G ~ 2GB of swap memory. Feel free to add MORE
sudo fallocate -l 2G swapfile

chmod 600 swapfile
mkswap swapfile
swapon swapfile
#Automatically mount this swap partition at startup
echo "/var/_swap_/swapfile none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

#Check free memory after
free -m

As several comments pointed out, don't forget to add sudo if you don't work as root.

btw, feel free to select another location/filename/size for the file.
/var is probably not the best place, but I don't know which place would be, and rarely care since tiny servers are mostly used for testing purposes.

Unfortuantely composer requires a lot of RAM & processing power. Here are a few things that I did, which combined, made the process bearable. This was on my cloud playpen env.

1. You may be simply running out of RAM. Enable swap: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/search?q=add+swap (note: I think best practice is to add a seperate partition. Digitalocean's guide is appropriate for their environment)
2. service mysql stop (kill your DB/mem-hog services to free some RAM - don't forget to start it again!)
3. use a secondary terminal session running top to watch memory/swap consumption until process is complete.
4. composer.phar update --prefer-dist -vvv (verbose output [still hangs at some points when working] and use distro zip files). Maybe try a --dry-run too?
5. Composer is apparently know to run slower in older versions of PHP (e.g. 5.3x). It was still slow in 5.5.9 for me...

DigitalOcean fix that does not require extra memory - activating swap, here is an example for 1gb:

in terminal run below

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

The above solution will work until the next reboot, after that the swap would have to be reactivated. To persist it between the reboots add the swap file to fstab:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

open the above file add add below line to the file

/var/swap.1 swap swap sw 0 0

now restart the server. Composer require works fine.

I've got this error when I ran composer install inside my PHP DOCKER container, It's a memory issue. Solved by increasing SWAP memory in DOCKER PREFERENCES from 512MB to 1.5GB

To do that:

Docker -> Preferences -> Rousources

Run composer self-update and composer clearcache remove vendor and composer.lock restart your local environment and then run php -d memory_limit=-1 /usr/local/bin/composer install

Increase the memory limit for composer

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

If you're using docker you can use COMPOSER_PROCESS_TIMEOUT

environment:
  COMPOSER_MEMORY_LIMIT: -1
  COMPOSER_PROCESS_TIMEOUT: 2000 #seconds

Also in big projects composer needs more RAM than 2GB, you can check that with ps -aux while it is running. You will have to add it manually inside docker options, nothing else will help.

Here's how I succeeded in installing maatwebsite\excel package from composer in Laravel Framework:

1. I download composer.json file and composer.lock file from my remote server.
2. I run composer update from local command prompt (then wait until all the install process finished).
3. Upload composer.lock file to remote server.
4. run composer install on remote server (then wait until all process finished).
5. DONE

composer 2 update have reduced the memory usage

composer self-update
composer update
composer require xxx

Fix for AWS ec2 Ubuntu Server Php Memory Value Upgrade For Magento 2.3.X

• Php 7.2 / 7.3

• nginx

• ubuntu

• composer 1.X

• mariaDB

• magento 2.3.X

> Error : Updating dependencies (including require-dev) Killed for

1. Ram Must at least 4GB
2. Change instance type to suitable or Upgrade Ram
3. Php Memory Value change
4. Server Restart
5. Try to install the same package again

> PHP value update > may locate under '/etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini' depend on your server and PHP fpm X.XX version > > Using Seed command 'change as your server requires' > on my case >> /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini

> memory limit type as "3.5G" or "3500MB" > Php 7.2.X

sudo sed -i "s/memory_limit = .*/memory_limit = 3.5G/" /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
  

> Php 7.3.X

  sudo sed -i "s/memory_limit = .*/memory_limit = 3.5G/" /etc/php/7.3/fpm/php.ini

> Test if applied on 'free -h' command

	free -h

Install-Package Again#

Install extension via Composer

>go to your Magento 2 installation directory

cd /var/www/html/

>with 'superuser' privileges

sudo su

> Start installation

composer require XXXXXX/XXXXXXX

> Enable Module s

php bin/magento module:enable XXXXXX/XXXXXXX


php bin/magento setup:upgrade
php bin/magento setup:di:compile
php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

> Restart

sudo reboot

Enjioy

I was facing this same issue on my ec2 instance, following steps worked for me :

1. Copied composer.lock file from my local environment to ec2.

2. then run sudo composer install and its simply installed all the dependencies for my project.

I solved it maintaining the below steps in my ubuntu server. Hope it will works for you.

• Stop my apache server

  sudo service apache2 stop

• Run composer update

  sudo composer update

• Start my apache server

  sudo service apache2 start

> php -d memory_limit=5G composer.phar update

Solved on Laravel/Homestead (Vagrant Windows)

1. Edit Homestead.yaml and increase memory from 2048 to 4096

2. vagrant up

3. vagrant ssh

4. Install Symfony with this line on the folder you choose (must be without files)

   COMPOSER_MEMORY_LIMIT=-1 composer create-project symfony/website-skeleton . -s dev
   

I get this problem caused for a package that don't update correctly with wildcards, I use directly the last version and it works finally.

"l3/cas-bundle": "~1.0" -------> "l3/cas-bundle": "1.1.13"

You can try setting preferred-install to "dist" in Composer config.

I was getting this error in a local Docker environment. I solved it by simply restarting Docker.