Why does my Perl script exit with 137?

Question

Is there a way to eliminate a warning (exit code 137) in perl? I am running a Perl script on linux within another shell script. This Perl script exits with a warning and exit code 137. I could not pinpoint what exit code 137 stands for.

What is the best way to avoid this warning? I tried "no warnings" in the script and I have an exit 0 at the end of my Perl script as well.

I am not sure how to figure out where the script exits. It seems to do its job really well (as my output is right) but exits with 137. I do a echo $status to see the exit code. — Bi., Jun 24 '09 at 22:20
You are going to have to at the very least show the part of your shell script that invokes the perl script and show the "warning" that is output if you want people to be able to help you. (Just edit your question and add those things to it.) — ysth, Jun 25 '09 at 00:15
Possible duplicate of [What does 'killed' mean?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19189522/what-does-killed-mean) — kenorb, Apr 03 '19 at 16:50

Igor Krivokon · Answer 1 · 2009-06-24T22:28:40.390

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137=128+9, which means some other process has sent you a signal 9, which is SIGKILL. I.e. the other script kills yours, that's what it looks like.

edited Jun 24 '09 at 22:28

answered Jun 24 '09 at 22:19

Igor Krivokon

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Not quite because running the script independently as well spits out 137. Thanks. – Bi. Jun 24 '09 at 22:36
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It is also possible that it sent itself the signal. – Balázs Pozsár Jun 24 '09 at 22:57
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It's the oomkiller process that's killing it -- not the other script. – Christy Oct 01 '15 at 15:54
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On Linux, check `dmesg` output to see if was the OOM Killer. – andrewdotn May 07 '16 at 16:55
Can you elaborate on why you have "128" in your answer? Is that a known number, that increments from there? – Elijah Lynn May 03 '19 at 22:41
Just want to throw in another [link to the docs](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Exit-Status.html). Quote: "When a command terminates on a fatal signal whose number is N, Bash uses the value 128+N as the exit status." – sr9yar Sep 02 '19 at 18:14
For OOM Killed detection, try this option https://stackoverflow.com/questions/726690/what-killed-my-process-and-why – Ravindranath Akila Sep 10 '22 at 16:30

score 53 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 18 '10 at 18:09

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I just ran into the same exit code 137 when launching a python script. It turns out to be the OOM killer kicking in, sending SIGKILL to python interpreter. If it's the same cause, you can find oom msgs in /var/log/messages

answered Aug 18 '10 at 18:09

Wenjun

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oom_reaper messages are also in `dmesg`. – HappyFace Jul 16 '19 at 14:23

score 9 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 21 '12 at 15:41

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I got the same error code 137 from an ANT script. Looking at /var/log/messages, I understand it's out of memory error.

Jun 21 07:33:30 myhost kernel: Out of memory: Kill process 52959 (java) score 164 or sacrifice child
Jun 21 07:33:30 myhost kernel: Killed process 52959 (java) total-vm:709496kB, anon-rss:397016kB, file-rss:0kB

edited Jun 21 '12 at 15:41

Shawn Chin

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answered Jun 21 '12 at 14:46

Shyam

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score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 24 '09 at 23:03

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I suspect the exit warning is printed out by the shell which called the perl program, not by the perl program itself, so "no warnings" in the perl code won't help you. exit code 137 means it was killed with a SIGKILL signal.

answered Jun 24 '09 at 23:03

Balázs Pozsár

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Why does my Perl script exit with 137?

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