Out of memory

Exit code 137 or SIGKILL usually means the Linux OOM killer terminated PhotoStructure because the system ran out of memory.

Check system logs

Confirm OOM killed the process:

dmesg | grep -i "out of memory"
journalctl -k | grep -i oom

Solutions

Increase available memory

The obvious fix: add more RAM or increase swap space.

Reduce PhotoStructure’s parallelism

Lower the number of concurrent workers:

export PS_MAX_SYNC_WORKERS=2

Fewer workers means less memory usage, at the cost of slower syncing.

Docker memory limits

If running in Docker, check your container’s memory limit:

docker stats photostructure

Increase the limit with --memory or in your compose file.

Large video files

Processing 4K or 8K video requires significant memory. If specific videos trigger OOM, they may need more resources than your system can provide.

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