'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.