Error when installing nfs-kernel-server

Question

I continue to get this error when trying to install following:

root@127:/home/gordon# sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libnfsidmap2 librpcsecgss3 nfs-common portmap
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libnfsidmap2 librpcsecgss3 nfs-common nfs-kernel-server portmap
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/367 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,491 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package libnfsidmap2.
(Reading database ... 252530 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libnfsidmap2 (from .../libnfsidmap2_0.23-2_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
 fork failed: Cannot allocate memory
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
root@127:/home/gordon# 

Is it a package problem or a memory problem?

Answer 1

It's a memory problem. the system cannot allocate memory for the unpacking process for libnfsidmap2, likely because there is no extra memory available. You will need to install more memory on the system or allocate more memory to the vm (if its a VM) to unpack the file you are installing.