Thread:Project:Support desk/"Fatal Error: Out of Memory" During Installation

I am seeing a strange "Fatal Error: Out of Memory" during the installation process of MW. It seems to occur right at the end of the pre-checks step, and even *after* saying I can successfully install MW (The "Next" buttons never get a chance to render for this step.)

I say it is strange because in an attempt to address it myself, I have already gone through the process of incrementally adjusting my PHP memory limit upwards in php.ini (I've gone all the way up to 512MB, and even 1GB!), and with each increase in memory I still get the error, but it's like the install script gets a little further and then throws the same error from within a different install-related php file.

The output of my pre-check is:

Welcome to MediaWiki!

Environmental checks

Basic checks are performed to see if this environment is suitable for MediaWiki installation. You should provide the results of these checks if you need help during installation.

PHP 5.3.3-7+squeeze14 is installed.

Warning: Could not find APC, XCache or WinCache.

Object caching is not enabled.

Found ImageMagick: /usr/bin/convert.

Image thumbnailing will be enabled if you enable uploads.

Using server name "http://family.weicherworld.com".

Using server URL "http://family.weicherworld.com".

Warning: The intl PECL extension is not available to handle Unicode normalization, falling back to slow pure-PHP implementation.

If you run a high-traffic site, you should read a little on Unicode normalization.

The environment has been checked.

You can install MediaWiki.

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 24379392) (tried to allocate 258 bytes) in /home/vg011web00/55/31/2923155/web/family/languages/Language.php on line 2833 -

As I mentioned, the file in which the error is thrown would change (here it's Language.php) as I increase the memory_limit parameter in php.ini. And when I look at the offending file/line it appears to be "require" statements. So it's like increasing the memory limit lets this step get further but still ends up failing.

I am trying to install MW 1.19.6, using PHP 5.3.3-7+squeeze14 (I'll also be using MySQL, but I haven't gotten that far in the process obviously.  I had started with the most current stable version of MW (1.20.5 I think?) but after seeing the same issue though trying to install a slightly older version might avoid the problem.

I will admit I'm new to MediaWiki and PHP, but I've tried to read up at least a little. Would APC or one of the other object-caching capabilities help me here if it's a memory issue? It didn't seem required.

Any recommendations would be highly appreciated.

Thanks JWeicher