# Getting cannot allocate memory error on starting services using docker-compose

**URL:** <https://forums.docker.com/t/getting-cannot-allocate-memory-error-on-starting-services-using-docker-compose/30473>\
**Category:** Docker Hub\
**Created:** [March 30, 2017, 11:07am UTC](https://forums.docker.com/t/getting-cannot-allocate-memory-error-on-starting-services-using-docker-compose/30473 "2017-03-30T11:07:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![snehas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@snehas](https://forums.docker.com/u/snehas)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 11:07am UTC](https://forums.docker.com/t/getting-cannot-allocate-memory-error-on-starting-services-using-docker-compose/30473/1 "2017-03-30T11:07:02Z")

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Hi,

When we try to start services on docker using docker-compose we get cannot allocate memory error.

Error:- ERROR: for peer2 Cannot create container for service peer2: symlink /proc/mounts /xfs100/overlay/57bda64428473ed009a1ecf25ab0fa0af3c9ff7cf1c592570e5e3c4d93729e99-init/merged/etc/mtab: cannot allocate memory

Command:- docker-compose -f docker-compose.yaml up -d

docker version- 1.13.0

docker-compose version- 1.10.0

free memory available when the error occured.  
[vajit@dockervm1 e2e\_cli\_v1]$ free  
total used free shared buff/cache available  
Mem: 3881960 1364616 563260 63568 1954084 2004460  
Swap: 2097148 578812 1518336

Please provide your input.

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**Author:** ![burrellramone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/docker/user_avatar/forums.docker.com/burrellramone/32/60568_2.png) [@burrellramone](https://forums.docker.com/u/burrellramone)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2025, 2:31pm UTC](https://forums.docker.com/t/getting-cannot-allocate-memory-error-on-starting-services-using-docker-compose/30473/2 "2025-07-20T14:31:54Z")

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I’m currently looking for help with this. How did you resolve it?

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**Author:** ![tazkysfin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/docker/user_avatar/forums.docker.com/tazkysfin/32/61856_2.png) [@tazkysfin](https://forums.docker.com/u/tazkysfin)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2025, 6:37am UTC](https://forums.docker.com/t/getting-cannot-allocate-memory-error-on-starting-services-using-docker-compose/30473/3 "2025-10-10T06:37:18Z")

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Hi @burrellramone, you can try checking the memory available using free -m **or** a basic reboot of your machine could resolve the issue (seen [few instances resolved](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/18295) with this approach).

Otherwise, try pruning unused data by running [docker system prune -a](https://docs.docker.com/reference/cli/docker/system/prune/). If there’s still an issue in starting up the services using the compose file, there may be other applications that is consuming your memory.

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**Author:** ![burrellramone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/docker/user_avatar/forums.docker.com/burrellramone/32/60568_2.png) [@burrellramone](https://forums.docker.com/u/burrellramone)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2025, 12:45am UTC](https://forums.docker.com/t/getting-cannot-allocate-memory-error-on-starting-services-using-docker-compose/30473/4 "2025-10-28T00:45:17Z")

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Thank you for the reply, @tazkysfin . What I did eventually was uninstall docker desktop and switch to the default docker context.