`npm install` killed for large package.json, no npm-debug.log

Question

I've found that if I have more than ~10 modules in my package.json , the installation gets killed. There's no npm-debug.log . It's a VPS with 0.5GB of RAM (~0.1GB available), so I think the issue is that it's running out of memory. I can't install laravel-elixir at all because I think it needs more than 0.1GB.

Is there a way to get npm-debug.log to appear so I can get more information? Is there an easy way around running out of memory? For now, I'm manually installing <5 modules at a time. Is there a way to make npm install modules one by one?

Here's part of the verbose output:

npm info retry fetch attempt 1 at 2:48:05 PM                                                                       
npm info attempt registry request try #1 at 2:48:05 PM                                                             
npm http fetch GET https://registry.npmjs.org/react-lazy-cache/-/react-lazy-cache-3.0.1.tgz                        
npm http fetch 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/react-lazy-cache/-/react-lazy-cache-3.0.1.tgz                        
npm verb afterAdd /root/.npm/is-promise/2.1.0/package/package.json not in flight; writing                          
npm verb correctMkdir /root/.npm correctMkdir not in flight; initializing                                          
npm verb addTmpTarball /tmp/npm-19388-c1a8aa40/registry.npmjs.org/react-lazy-cache/-/react-lazy-cache-3.0.1.tgz not
 in flight; adding                                                                                                 
npm verb addTmpTarball already have metadata; skipping unpack for react-lazy-cache@3.0.1                           
npm verb correctMkdir /root/.npm correctMkdir not in flight; initializing                                          
npm verb afterAdd /root/.npm/is-promise/2.1.0/package/package.json written                                         
npm verb afterAdd /root/.npm/react-lazy-cache/3.0.1/package/package.json not in flight; writing                    
npm verb correctMkdir /root/.npm correctMkdir not in flight; initializing                                          
npm verb afterAdd /root/.npm/react-lazy-cache/3.0.1/package/package.json written                                   
loadDep:deep-equal
Killed  

Answer 1

Adding swap to system works for me. Here's tutorial for adding one to Ubuntu.