pack operation is thrashing my server

Hi,

I'm having memory issues when trying to clone a remote git repository.

I'm running: "git clone git+ssh://user@foo.bar.com/var/git/foo"

The remote repository is bare, and is 180MB in size (says du), with
1824 objects. The remote (VPS) server is running git version 1.5.6.4
on Arch Linux on a x86_64 Opteron with 256MB of dedicated RAM.

The clone command fires off some packing operations that bring the
server to its knees:

PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
21782 kenpratt  20   0  444m 212m  272 D    3 83.0   0:04.98 git-pack-object

The clone also seems to hang forever. Progress stays at 0% for hours,
and it never progresses past compressing the first object.

I've tried very conservative pack settings:

[pack]
        threads = 1
        windowmemory = 64M
        deltacachesize = 1M
        deltacachelimit = 1M

[pack]
        threads = 1
        windowmemory = 16M
        deltacachesize = 16M
        deltacachelimit = 0

I've tries many variations like those, but nothing seems to help.

A "git repack -a -d" only takes 5 seconds to run on the same
repository on my laptop (a non-bare copy), and seems to peak at ~160MB
of RAM usage.

Any tips/help would be greatly appreciated. This repository is still
small -- it will eventually grow to multiple GB in size, as it is a
mix of small text files and binaries ranging in size from 2MB to
200MB. Is it not feasible to clone repositories of that size that are
hosted on a server with 256MB of RAM?

Thanks!

Ken