oom-kill / exceeded memory limit

The scheduler killed the job for exceeding the memory it requested

why

On a cluster you get exactly the memory you asked for, not what the node has. Going over gets the job killed immediately — the tool's own output stops mid-sentence and explains nothing, because it was never told.

what to do

Ask for more for that specific step, then measure rather than guess: seff <jobid> (Slurm) reports what the job actually used, which is how you set the next request. In a workflow, raise the memory directive for that one process rather than the whole run.

Slurm / scheduler behaviour
This is one entry from BioErrors, a catalogue of bioinformatics error messages that point at the wrong thing. Every entry was traced to its real cause before it was written down.
If your error is not in it, paste it there and it gets traced and added.