Composer killed while updating - php

Question

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?

Answer 1

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:
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.
Upload or git push the composer.lock file.
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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.
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)
service mysql stop (kill your DB/mem-hog services to free some RAM - don't forget to start it again!)
use a secondary terminal session running top to watch memory/swap consumption until process is complete.
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?
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...

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

Increase the memory limit for composer
php -d memory_limit=4G /usr/local/bin/composer update

Answer 7

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

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

Here's how I succeeded in installing maatwebsite\excel package from composer in Laravel Framework:
I download composer.json file and composer.lock file from my remote server.
I run composer update from local command prompt (then wait until all the install process finished).
Upload composer.lock file to remote server.
run composer install on remote server (then wait until all process finished).
DONE

Answer 10

composer 2 update have reduced the memory usage
composer self-update
composer update
composer require xxx

Answer 11

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
Ram Must at least 4GB
Change instance type to suitable or Upgrade Ram
Php Memory Value change
Server Restart
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

Answer 12

I was facing this same issue on my ec2 instance, following steps worked for me :
Copied composer.lock file from my local environment to ec2.
then run sudo composer install and its simply installed all the dependencies for my project.

Answer 13

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

Answer 14

php -d memory_limit=5G composer.phar update

Answer 15

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"

Answer 16

Solved on Laravel/Homestead (Vagrant Windows)
Edit Homestead.yaml and increase memory from 2048 to 4096
vagrant up
vagrant ssh
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

Answer 17

I was using:
Virtualbox
4096 Gb RAM
2 CPU
10 GB HDD (500 MB swap)
Ubuntu 20.04
Running:
composer update in a laravel 8 project folder
I didn't set the swap for the virtual machine, so Virtualbox created a 500Mb swap space, which was NOT enough.
So composer was using 4Gb of RAM plus swap.
I gave more swap space to the VM and then it worked.
As the picture below, composer used all my RAM + 2GB of swap
System Monitor

Answer 18

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

Answer 19

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