Alright, @oast, you've got me stumped. That error message is quite clear - the system on which you are trying to run that QIIME 2 command does not have access to the 3.x GB of memory it needs to do so.
Here are some suggestions:
- Double-check the remote system you're running commands on. Make sure it does, in fact, have the resources you believe it does, and make sure that you are logging into it in a way that doesn't somehow, prevent you from using them.
- Try reducing the number/size of processes that are running on the remote before running your command. 64GB is 4x the memory I have on my machine, and I've never had this issue. It's possible that, if everything checks out with system resources (above), there are other heavy processes using up the system RAM. Try shutting down everything you safely can, and then re-running.
- Talk to someone on site with the machine. A sysadmin would be ideal, but anyone with access to it may be able to help you figure out what's going on.
- Consider renting a computer on the cloud with adequate RAM
- Consider whether disabling Golay error correction is a good choice for you. This will save you some RAM, but you might lose more reads, and it won't fix the underlying lack of memory issue, so you might run into the same issue when calculating diversity, assigning taxonomies, etc.
Good luck, and let us know how this turns out!
Chris