'push origin master' takes over 8 minutes (local ssh)

Something happened to the repo, and 'push origin master'
is taking now very long time: > 8 minutes  (this is ssh to localhost).
It's in git-pack-objects.

The git-pack-objects sits there for >8 minutes using very low cpu (<1 %)
but lots of RAM (>300MB). Then it bombs with malloc error.
I could add swap to the machine [1], but this long time with
low cpu usage is suspicious, no ?

Repo counters are below [2]

I suspect one file, history of which accumulated thousands commits
from the script. I'd like to erase the history of this file but I don't know
how. And I don't know where there is a connection.


Yakov

[1] This is vps machine that hasb 128MB ram + 256MB swap.

[2] Repo counters.

- the master repo which is being pushed to (it is bare, the "master" repo):
count: 653
size: 140692
in-pack: 21730
packs: 2
prune-packable: 5
garbage: 0

the repo which does the push:
count: 369
size: 42960
in-pack: 22145
packs: 4
prune-packable: 9
garbage: 0

Don't ask me about workflow.
I synchronize files between four hosts using git.
I beleive this is very unusual workflow. No branches.