git transfer ai_generated true

error: pack-objects died of signal 9

ID: git/pack-objects-died

Also available as: JSON · Markdown
80%Fix Rate
83%Confidence
50Evidence
2023-01-01First Seen

Version Compatibility

VersionStatusIntroducedDeprecatedNotes
2 active — — —

Root Cause

The pack-objects process was killed (usually by OOM killer sending signal 9) during push or gc. Large repositories with many objects require significant memory for delta compression.

generic

Workarounds

  1. 85% success Limit pack-objects memory usage and threads 
    git config --global pack.windowMemory 100m && git config --global pack.packSizeLimit 100m && git config --global pack.threads 1. This reduces memory footprint at the cost of slower packing.
  2. 80% success Push in smaller batches using partial history 
    Push a subset of commits: git push origin HEAD~100:refs/heads/main, then incrementally push more. This reduces the number of objects pack-objects must process at once.

Dead Ends

Common approaches that don't work:

  1. Increasing http.postBuffer size 80% fail

    postBuffer affects the HTTP transfer size, not the memory used by pack-objects for delta compression. The OOM condition persists.

  2. Retrying the push immediately without changing configuration 90% fail

    The same memory pressure causes the OOM killer to terminate pack-objects again each time

Error Chain

Leads to:
Preceded by:
Frequently confused with: