Git fails to push with error 'out of memory'

I'm using gitosis on a server that has a low amount of memory, specifically around 512 MB. When I try to push a large folder (happens to be a backup from an android phone), I get:

me@corellia:~/Configs/$ git push origin master

Counting objects: 18, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (14/14), done.
fatal: Out of memory, malloc failed MiB | 685 KiB/s   
error: pack-objects died of signal 13
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@dagobah:Configs'

I've been searching the web, and notably found: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg01747.html as well as http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/Out-of-memory-error-during-git-push-td5443705.html but these don't seem to help me for two reasons: 1) I am not actually out of memory when I push. When I run 'top' during the push, I get:

24262 git       18   0 16204 6084 1096 S    2  1.2   0:00.12 git-unpack-obje   

Also, during the push if I run /head/meminfo, I get:

MemTotal:       524288 kB
MemFree:        289408 kB
Buffers:             0 kB
Cached:              0 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:              0 kB
Inactive:            0 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       524288 kB

So, it seems that I have enough memory free, but it's actually still failing, and I'm not enough of a git guru to figure out what is happening. I would appreciate it if someone could give me a hand here and tell me what could be causing this problem, and what I can do to solve it.

Thanks!

EDIT:

The output of running the ulimit -a command:

scottj@dagobah:~$ ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 0
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 204800
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 32
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 1024
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 10240
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 204800
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited

EDIT:

The git objects and sizes are:

313796  .git/objects/88/7ce48679f885af4c466d4ddccef9a9954a9de6
224276  .git/objects/18/261f6a52926a756c7ecb453e025d1f25937026
6248    .git/objects/63/a0b4e622c893d3dcc162052b43301030d0c86d
5608    .git/objects/a2/0c65987656cba591171549752eb97f0207fec8
2608    .git/objects/pack/pack-3be8300f69b67fa8fa687df84bbd9b8c96e86c8e.pack
28  .git/objects/pack/pack-3be8300f69b67fa8fa687df84bbd9b8c96e86c8e.idx
24  .git/objects/c9/8909563ec60369d69ac2d317af25a44c9fc198
24  .git/objects/5d/1f74bd9bc4c575a7eeec08d59916d9829068d1
24  .git/objects/53/edad79cb051f5e7864d9d3339fa59990ccfe2d
8   .git/objects/80/dd50c7a314950e5a1f56c0210b0a91f48ee792

It is a bit of a stretch but give this a try

git -c core.packedGitWindowSize=32m -c core.packedGitLimit=256m push origin master

This overrides a couple of parameters that limit the number of bytes mapped from files. These are the defaults used for a 32-bit system, the 64-bit defaults are much larger. I'm speculating you are using a 64-bit system, which is causing git to use very large defaults, but there are resource constraints (perhaps from running in a VM) that trigger the error.

These configuration parameters and values came from http://schacon.github.com/git/git-config.html