Memory error while using pip install Matplotlib

Question

I am using Python 2.7, If i try to install Matplotlib I am getting this error if i use \"pip install matplotlib\"

 Exception:
  Traceback (most recent call l         


        

Answer 1

It seems that you have insufficient RAM to build matplotlib from scratch. To overcome that, either turn on swap:

# create swap file of 512 MB
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=524288
# modify permissions
chown root:root /swapfile
chmod 0600 /swapfile
# setup swap area
mkswap /swapfile
# turn swap on
swapon /swapfile

Or, if you have raspbian installed on your SD card, you can install matplotlib from the repository:

apt-get install python-matplotlib

Answer 2

--no-cache-dir didn't work for me. I just closed all apps and only then I was able to finish installation.

Answer 3

This error is coming up because, it seems, pip's caching mechanism is trying to read the entire file into memory before caching it… which poses a problem in a limited-memory environment, as matplotlib is ~50mb.

A simpler solution, until pip is patched to use a constant-space caching algorithm, is to run pip with --no-cache-dir to avoid the cache:

$ pip --no-cache-dir install matplotlib