# Out of memory, malloc failed

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/out-of-memory-malloc-failed/153745>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [November 20, 2008, 6:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/out-of-memory-malloc-failed/153745 "2008-11-20T18:57:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![justus](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b2d939/32.png) [@justus](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/justus)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2008, 6:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/out-of-memory-malloc-failed/153745/1 "2008-11-20T18:57:50Z")

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Hello,

After having done hundreds of successfull deployments of updates to my  
aplication, suddenly I have run into the following error message:

‘fatal: Out of memory, malloc failed  
fatal: unpack-objects failed’

This causes the deloyment to fail. I am using git, github and  
capistrano.

I am pretty sure I know what cause this: I had earlier failed to  
‘gitignore’ the development.log file which had a size of over 1 Gig.  
Pushing to the repo was already very slow and cap deploy fails resulting  
in the above error message.

Now, I have already deleted the big file, it is nowhere to be seen in  
the repository anymore. I have also reverted to a much earlier commit.  
But strangely the ‘ghost’ of that big file seems be still around  
somewhere in the .git folder. The problem persists. Deployment fails.  
This never happened before.

My questions:

1.How could I possibly delete this file from the repo which most likely  
the casue for this problem - given that is is ‘invisble’?

2.Or how can I ensure that the git repo really reflects 100% my current  
application on the development machine, where I have DEFINITELY deleted  
this file?

3.Is there a way to completely reset the git repo? (I’m not talking  
about the ‘git reset’ command). I am looking for a away to keep my app  
on the dev machine but start but start with a completely fresh new and  
empty repository.

4.Any other ideas how this could be solved maybe through capistrano  
(deploy.rb) or settings on the remote server?

Thanks a lot in advance for any help! It would be greatly appreciated.  
Justus