Git on Windows, "Out of memory - malloc failed"

Have run into a problem with repository and tried almost every possible config setting found out there eg. pack.WindowMemory etc etc

I believe someone has checked in a large file to remote repository and now each time I try and pull or push to it, GIT tries to pack it and runs out of memory:

Auto packing the repository for optimum performance. You may also
run "git gc" manually. See "git help gc" for more information.
Counting objects: 6279, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (6147/6147), done.
fatal: Out of memory, malloc failed (tried to allocate 1549040327 bytes)
error: failed to run repack

Have tried git gc & git repack with various options but keeps returning same error.

Almost given up and about to just create a new repo but thought I'd ask around first :)

I found a solution Here that worked for me.

In .git/config file (client and/or server) I added the following:

[core]
  packedGitLimit = 128m
  packedGitWindowSize = 128m

[pack]
  deltaCacheSize = 128m
  packSizeLimit = 128m
  windowMemory = 128m

For reference (you might already seen it), the msysgit case dealing with that issue is the ticket 292.

It suggests several workarounds:

• Disable delta compression globally. For this you have to set pack.window to 0. Of course this will make the repository much larger on disc.
• Disable delta compression for some files. Check the delta flag on the manpage to gitattributes.
• git config --global pack.threads 1
• git config --global pack.windowMemory 256m (you already tried that one, but also illustrated in "Error when pulling warning: suboptimal pack - out of memory")
• other settings are mentioned in "git push fatal: unable to create thread: Resource temporarily unavailable" and "Git pull fails with bad pack header error" in case this is pack-related.
• sm4 adds in the comments:

> To disable the delta compression for certain files, in .git/info/attributes, add:

*.zip binary -delta

From Gitattributes man page:

> Delta compression will not be attempted for blobs for paths with the attribute delta set to false.

---

Maybe a simpler workaround would be to somehow reset the history before that large file commit, and redo the other commits from there.

EDIT:  Since git-v2.5.0 _^(Aug/2015), git-for-windows (formerly MSysGit)
      provides 64-bits versions as noticed by Pan.student.
      In this answer I was advising to install Cygwin 64-bits (providing 64-bits Git version).

---

I got a similar Out of memory, malloc failed issue using MSysGit when reaching the 4GB barrier:

> git --version
git version 1.8.3.msysgit.0

> file path/Git/cmd/git
path/Git/cmd/git: PE32 executable for MS Windows (console) Intel 80386 32-bit

> time git clone --bare -v ssh://linuxhost/path/repo.git
Cloning into bare repository 'repo.git'...
remote: Counting objects: 1664490, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (384843/384843), done.
remote: Total 1664490 (delta 1029586), reused 1664490 (delta 1029586)
Receiving objects: 100% (1664490/1664490), 550.96 MiB | 1.55 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1029586/1029586), done.
fatal: Out of memory, malloc failed (tried to allocate 4691583 bytes)
fatal: remote did not send all necessary objects

real    13m8.901s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.015s

Finally git 64 bits from Cygwin fix it:

> git --version
git version 1.7.9

> file /usr/bin/git
/usr/bin/git: PE32+ executable (console) x86-64 (stripped to external PDB), for MS Windows

> time git clone --bare -v ssh://linuxhost/path/repo.git
Cloning into bare repository 'repo.git'...
remote: Counting objects: 1664490, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (384843/384843), done.
remote: Total 1664490 (delta 1029586), reused 1664490 (delta 1029586)
Receiving objects: 100% (1664490/1664490), 550.96 MiB | 9.19 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1029586/1029586), done.

real    13m9.451s
user    3m2.488s
sys     3m53.234s

FYI on linuxhost 64 bits:

repo.git> git config -l
user.email[email protected]
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.bare=true

repo.git> git --version
git version 1.8.3.4

repo.git> uname -a
Linux linuxhost 2.6.32-279.19.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Sat Nov 24 14:35:28 EST 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

If my answer does not fix your issue, you may also check these pages:

• git clone out of memory even with 5.6GB RAM free and 50 GB hard disk

• Git clone fails with out of memory error - “fatal: out of memory, malloc failed (tried to allocate 905574791 bytes) / fatal: index-pack failed”

• git-clone memory allocation error

• MSysGit issues tracker

Some of the options suggested in the selected answer seem to be only partially relevant to the issue or not necessary at all.

From looking at https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config, it appears that just setting the following option is sufficient (set only for the project here):

git config pack.windowMemory 512m

From the manual:

> pack.windowMemory > > The maximum size of memory that is consumed by each thread in git-pack-objects[1] for pack window memory when no limit is given on the command line. The value can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". When left unconfigured (or set explicitly to 0), there will be no limit.

With this, I never went over the specified 512m per thread, actually used RAM was about half of that most of the time. Of course, the amount chosen here is user-specific depending on the available RAM and number of threads.

This worked for me, but I had to set the options via the command line using:

git --global core\pack [param] value