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Making an answer from my comment:

I had the same problem when I used /run/shm as my /bigdisk for storing sort temp files. /run/shm is a ram disk, so when sort needed to cache partial results on disk (which it does when memory is almost full), memory ran out. The kernel killed sort, as it was the process using the most memory.

Using a location stored on a physical disk instead the ram disk solved it.

Making an answer from my comment:

I had the same problem when I used /run/shm as my /bigdisk for storing sort temp files. /run/shm is a ram disk, so when sort needed to cache partial results on disk (which it does when memory is almost full), memory ran out. The kernel killed sort, as it was the process using the most memory.

Using a location stored on a physical disk instead of the ram disk solved it.

Making an answer from my comment:

I had the same problem when I used /run/shm as my /bigdisk for storing sort temp files. /run/shm is a ram disk, so when sort needed to cache partial results on disk (which it does when memory is almost full), memory ran out. The kernel sort, as it was the process using the most memory.

Using a location stored on a physical disk instead the ram disk solved it.

Making an answer from my comment:

I had the same problem when I used /run/shm as my /bigdisk for storing sort temp files. /run/shm is a ram disk, so when sort needed to cache partial results on disk (which it does when memory is almost full), memory ran out. The kernel killed sort, as it was the process using the most memory.

Using a location stored on a physical disk instead the ram disk solved it.

Making an answer from my comment:

I had the same problem when I used /run/shm as my /bigdisk for storing sorts temp files. It seems the kernel considers the ram disk in /run/shm as more important, so when sort was writing to it and memory ran out, the kernel killed sort. Using a physical disk instead solved it.

Making an answer from my comment:

I had the same problem when I used /run/shm as my /bigdisk for storing sort temp files. /run/shm is a ram disk, so when sort needed to cache partial results on disk (which it does when memory is almost full), memory ran out. The kernel sort, as it was the process using the most memory. 

Using a location stored on a physical disk instead the ram disk solved it.