Fatal error trying to allocate memory when creating thumbs

Question

I want to share something that happened to me on the way.

I uploaded an image to my website and after that I created some thumbs. Those thumbs where being cropped automatically from relatively big files (jpeg images of about 5mb), and I was doing that lots of times. Suddenly, when uploading a big file and doing a thumb from a cropped image (not the original), I found out this error:

Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 22464 bytes)

How could I exhaust 128Mb of memory?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 04 '12 at 12:05

The main problem was I was using more memory than the available. The first thing to check was, of course, if I was uploading a correct file and not one too big. Ok, 3Mb. Then, which was the problem?

Normally, this kind of error comes with the exact line where it completely depletes your available memory. In my case, was inside this one:

$orig = imagecreatefromjpeg($fullPathFilename);

So, the server crashed when allocating a new image into memory. And then, this came to my mind: I didn't free any of the previous allocation calls! As aforementioned, I happened to generate lots of thumbs from multiple sized images. And silly me, I didn't free any of those. So, if you happen to see this error when you crop/resize/alter multiple images, check for this call inside your code:

imagedestroy($orig);

So, to sum up.

If you don't find the `imagedestroy()` function, then you may have found your problem!

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 04 '12 at 12:30

1

I have also encounted with this problem

Increase the following variables so that your page execution will not stop:

max_input_time
memory_limit
max_execution_time

Cheers

edited Sep 04 '12 at 12:30

Kevin Gosse

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answered Sep 04 '12 at 12:25

Shail

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that's true. In fact, if you do not have enough memory, input time or execution time, you may not be able to do anything at all! – Sergi Juanola Sep 04 '12 at 13:59

Fatal error trying to allocate memory when creating thumbs

2 Answers2

If you don't find the imagedestroy() function, then you may have found your problem!

If you don't find the `imagedestroy()` function, then you may have found your problem!