SPAdes: <jemalloc>: Error in malloc(): out of memory

Question

[Paul]

I am working on De-novo assembly of a bacterial genome. While running SPAdes I get this following error.

*********
<jemalloc>: Error in malloc(): out of memory
== Error ==  system call for: "['/root/SPAdes-3.5.0-Linux/bin/hammer',
'/root/spades_AM1_output/corrected/configs/config.info']" finished
abnormally, err code: -6
********

But I am using a system with the following configuration

Thread 16
Memory 16GB
Disk Space 500GB

Please let me what can I do to rectify this error?

[Devon Ryan]

Try it on a machine with more memory.

[Paul]

How much more?? around 32 GB RAM?

[Devon Ryan]

¯\ _ (ツ)_/¯ Enough that you don't run out. Alternatively, you could try a different assembler, perhaps something else will be more memory efficient.

[lakhujanivijay]

+1 for ¯\ _ (ツ)_/¯

[Buffo]

It depends basically of: How much reads do you have? How long is your genome expected to be? and, in the case of spades, which and how many kmers are you using?, spades_manual you may try: -k 21,33 --careful --only-assembler

[st.ph.n]

Can you show the command you used, that gave you the error?

Answer 1

[h.mon]

This is not an answer to your question, but it is very important anyway:

Are you running SPAdes as root? I see it was installed on the /root/ folder, which is really bad practice. By default, the /root/ folder permissions are rwx------ root root, which means only the root user could access this folder. You either changed the /root/ folder default permissions (bad), or you are running SPAdes as root (worst). The only thing you need to do as root are system-wide administrative tasks - do not run everyday stuff as root.

Install SPAdes on your HOME folder:

mkdir -p ~/SPAdes-3.5.0/
cd ~/SPAdes-3.5.0/
[continue with install ...]

Finally, why using such an old version?

[Paul]

Installing the latest version solved the issue... Thanks