composer update: mmap() failed: [12] Cannot allocate memory PHP Fatal error: Out of memory

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proc_open(): fork failed errors#

If composer shows proc_open() fork failed on some commands:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'ErrorException' with message 'proc_open(): fork failed - Cannot allocate memory' in phar

This could be happening because the VPS runs out of memory and has no Swap space enabled.

free -m

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2048 357 1690 0 0 237
-/+ buffers/cache: 119 1928
Swap: 0 0 0

To enable the swap you can use for example:

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

You can make a permanent swap file following this tutorial.