WARNING: Discourse requires 1GB RAM

Product Support Self-hosting

AI-generated summary

Users are discussing installation issues with Discourse on a VPS with 1GB RAM, encountering a warning that the system doesn’t meet the minimum RAM requirement. vove reports the error persists despite having a 2GB–10GB swap file and sufficient free space. Stephen notes that 1000MB ≠ 1024MB (1GB), suggesting the system may fall short by a few MB. pfaffman confirms the system has less than 1GB usable RAM and offers three solutions: upgrade RAM, edit discourse-setup to skip the check, or manually create a YAML config. Maltazard shares success after lowering the RAM threshold in discourse-setup from 990MB to a smaller value. Ed_S notes the limit was already slightly relaxed to accommodate providers offering slightly under 1GB, and asks for the provider and output of free -m --si. Maltazard replies they’re on Amazon EC2, showing 986MB total RAM and 4294MB swap. Ed_S suggests adjusting the limit from 990MB to 980MB to better support nominal 1GB systems without compromising stability. The consensus is that while Discourse can run with less than 1GB RAM + swap, performance may suffer, and 3GB total (RAM + swap) is recommended for small forums.

1

Hi all!

I’ve been trying to install Discourse, but without success so far.

I have a VPS with 1 GB ram and a 2gb swap file. Whenever I run ./discourse-setup I get the following error. (I’ve done a few clean installs on this VPS and also tried with 5b and 10gb swap files)

https://i.imgur.com/kn7ZsMw.png

As you can see in the screenshots there’s enough space free in the swap file.

I’ve searched the forums but all I get is either “the setup should make ask to make a swap file itself” or “you can make a swap file and then run the installation again”

I hope anyone has a solution.

Thanks in advance.

2

Your free + used is 1000MB, a gigabyte is 1024MB. Where is this hosted?

3

You have less than 1000mb of ram. The message is correct. You can either get more ram, edit discourse-setup to skip the test, or create a yml file by hand.

4

I’ve met same error like you.
I manually modified discourse-setup and change the limit from 990 to a smaller number.
And it works.. for now.

5

I believe the limit was already moved down just a little, because some providers provide just a little less than 1G when you get a machine with a nominal 1G. (Perhaps see Fatal error when trying to start Docker (Oracle VM))

What’s your provider? What does
free -m --si
show?

(In any case, if you have enough swap+RAM then the forum will function. If you have too little RAM the forum may run slower and upgrades may take longer. 3G of swap+RAM is enough for a small forum, and it’s what I use.)

6

In my case, it is an Amazon EC2 server.
Here’s the result of free -m --si

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             986         594          75          14         317         209
Swap:           4294         811        3483
7

Thanks - I think that justifies an adjustment from 990 to something a little less - perhaps 980. The intention is surely to support commodity offerings with a nominal 1G, and although there might be a hard limit, it’s much smaller than that, so a small adjustment downward would put no-one in jeopardy.