$15 Million Global Learning XPRIZE

The Global Learning XPRIZE which duration-wise, is a very very long challenge (it will be awarded in 2019) launched on September 22, 2014 and it:

"challenges teams from around the world to develop open source and scalable software that will enable children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic, empowering them to take control of their own learning and ultimately their future. Our goal is an empowered generation that will positively impact their communities, countries and the world."

Similar to the Ansari X Prize,  there is a grand prize of $10 million to the winning team. Along the way, there will be a prize of $1 million each to 5 promising teams that are selected as finalists.

The X Prize was inspired by the Orteig Prize which was instituted in 1919. Image comes from Strive Masiyiwa's photo stream.

YUM: Cannot allocate memory

While trying to execute yum -y install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib for the installation of NFS on a test EC2 micro instance running CentOS, I got the following error:

Total                                                                                                              1.6 MB/s | 644 kB     00:00    
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.
  Installing : libgssglue-0.1-11.el6.i686                                                                                                      1/7
Error in POSTIN scriptlet in rpm package libgssglue-0.1-11.el6.i686
error: Couldn't fork %post(libgssglue-0.1-11.el6.i686): Cannot allocate memory
  Installing : libtirpc-0.2.1-6.el6_4.i686                                                                                                     2/7
Error in POSTIN scriptlet in rpm package libtirpc-0.2.1-6.el6_4.i686
error: Couldn't fork %post(libtirpc-0.2.1-6.el6_4.i686): Cannot allocate memory
Error in PREIN scriptlet in rpm package rpcbind-0.2.0-11.el6.i686
error: Couldn't fork %pre(rpcbind-0.2.0-11.el6.i686): Cannot allocate memory
error:   install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping rpcbind-0.2.0-11.el6
  Installing : libevent-1.4.13-4.el6.i686                                                                                                      4/7
Error in POSTIN scriptlet in rpm package libevent-1.4.13-4.el6.i686
error: Couldn't fork %post(libevent-1.4.13-4.el6.i686): Cannot allocate memory
  Installing : keyutils-1.4-4.el6.i686                                                                                                         5/7
  Installing : nfs-utils-lib-1.1.5-6.el6.i686                                                                                                  6/7
Error in POSTIN scriptlet in rpm package nfs-utils-lib-1.1.5-6.el6.i686
error: Couldn't fork %post(nfs-utils-lib-1.1.5-6.el6.i686): Cannot allocate memory
Error in PREIN scriptlet in rpm package 1:nfs-utils-1.2.3-39.el6.i686
error: Couldn't fork %pre(nfs-utils-1:1.2.3-39.el6.i686): Cannot allocate memory
error:   install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping nfs-utils-1:1.2.3-39.el6
  Verifying  : keyutils-1.4-4.el6.i686                                                                                                         1/7
  Verifying  : rpcbind-0.2.0-11.el6.i686                                                                                                       2/7
  Verifying  : libgssglue-0.1-11.el6.i686                                                                                                      3/7
  Verifying  : 1:nfs-utils-1.2.3-39.el6.i686                                                                                                   4/7
  Verifying  : nfs-utils-lib-1.1.5-6.el6.i686                                                                                                  5/7
  Verifying  : libevent-1.4.13-4.el6.i686                                                                                                      6/7
  Verifying  : libtirpc-0.2.1-6.el6_4.i686                                                                                                     7/7

Dependency Installed:
  keyutils.i686 0:1.4-4.el6                                                                                                                       

Failed:
  libevent.i686 0:1.4.13-4.el6           libgssglue.i686 0:0.1-11.el6       libtirpc.i686 0:0.2.1-6.el6_4       nfs-utils.i686 1:1.2.3-39.el6     
  nfs-utils-lib.i686 0:1.1.5-6.el6       rpcbind.i686 0:0.2.0-11.el6      

Complete!

The error was exactly that: the VM did not have enough memory due to the already running Apache, MySQL and Tomcat services I had running on VM with only 613MB of RAM.

Killing Tomcat freed up enough memory to allow the command succeed.