Allow more memory when docker build a Dockerfile

Question

I try to build a Dockerfile and I get this :

Linking CXX executable ../../../../bin/clang
collect2: error: ld terminated with signal 9 [Killed]
make[2]: *** [bin/clang-3.2] Error 1
make[1]: *** [tools/clang/tools/driver/CMakeFiles/clang.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2

Typically it means that I don't have enough memory. So how do I run docker build with a bigger memory (or swap ?)

Thanks :)

Answer 1

Did you try increasing memory available for docker via Docker > Preferencess... > Advanced > Ram. It defaults to only 2 GB (on mac).

Answer 2

When you are building the image docker has access to all the memory in the system.

I would recommend you not to compile while building the image, the union file system is slow and I have noticed it can run out of hard drive space pretty quickly.

What I do when I need to package an executable is to set up a container with all the necessary dependencies for compilation and then I run it with the source code mounted in a shared volume.

Once the code is compiled I move the executable into another folder where I have another Docker files that ADDs the executable into a minimal base image(like scratch or busy box).

By doing this I save time in compilation and I end up with a much smaller image.

Answer 3

Buy a new RAM stick? :)

More seriously, you are probably running on a VM? You need to go change the settings of your virtual machine and increase the RAM size.

In VirtualBox, it is under Settings -> System -> Motherboard -> Base Memory.

By default, Docker has no memory limitation, so if you are out of memory, you need to increase the host's capacity.