Fix Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted

Rai    Linux     allowed memory, code, error, exhausted, fatal, installing, Linux, memory, pear, pecl, php, size, xdebug

I was installing xdebug a few days back to one of the production servers when I encountered this beautiful error message:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 143 bytes) in /usr/share/pear/PEAR/PackageFile/v2/Validator.php on line 1608 Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 64 bytes)

So my instinct tells me to look inside the php.ini file and find for this line:

memory_limit = 12M

The server’s php.ini file is already set to 256M so I should go look for something else. Luckily, I found this tip from www.agileapproach.com.

Open the file /usr/share/pear/pearcmd.php and add this right after the < ?php line:

@ini_set('memory_limit', '16M');

That should fix the “Fatal error: Allowed memory size” error. I can now resume installing xdebug without any errors.

The reason why editing the php.ini will not fix the issue is because PECL/PEAR does not use the PHP settings, so the PEAR settings needs to be adjusted.

Hope this helps.

KDE 4 Consumes 39% Less Memory Than Its Predecessor

Rai    Linux, News     KDE, Linux, memory, performance

In billie’s blog, he mentioned a really good reason for KDE users to switch to KDE 4 when it comes out.

Not mine, but one Korneliusz Jarzebski (in Polish) has done the numbers (pro-linux coverage in German) and produced a chart showing exactly how the RAM consumption of comparable KDE4 and KDE3 sessions measure up. The result is a mindblowing 39% smaller memory footprint in KDE 4. This just goes to show, that it’s worth making large-scale changes to your desktop environment to get the fruit hanging on the higher branches. Wait for the mini- and micro-optimisations to start happening in KDE 4.x, too.

The 39% less in memory usage may raise some eyebrows knowing that a lot of people consider KDE as more memory-hogging than GNOME. But at least we have something to look forward to KDE 4. I know I do.

Dual-channel vs. Single-channel Memory

Rai    Hardware     double channel, memory, RAM, single channel

Lately, I am constantly being bothered by the POST message my computer shows me that says:

Found 1048576KB Memory Single-Channel Mode

I tinkered around the BIOS settings, checking that I must have left something out that should be set other than the default value, and still that goddamn message still shows up. But I know that it is about the memory (duh!). read more