When trying to install, upgrade or do other rpm-related things, rpm stops with the message: memory alloc (2581680408 bytes) returned NULL. The actual number of bytes is sometimes different: [root@mordor roel]# helix-update Distribution: Red Hat Linux 7.0 memory alloc (1420823072 bytes) returned NULL. I have tried rebuilding the db, but this also fails with the same error.
For unknown reasons, rpm is requesting very large malloc's. Rather than returning a NULL pointer and segfaulting, rpm simply exits with an error message. This is usually caused by asking rpm to install a corrupted package, but without more details about what operation you are trying to perform, I cannot tell more. Please reopen with more specific details.