diff --git a/src/cmdlib.sh b/src/cmdlib.sh
index 2fbd40eaaa..9f9be95e97 100755
--- a/src/cmdlib.sh
+++ b/src/cmdlib.sh
@@ -651,7 +651,9 @@ EOF
 
     # There seems to be some false positives in shellcheck
     # https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/issues/2217
-    memory_default=2048
+    # If this is too low, we can hit ENOMEM issues in the guest kernel related
+    # to a 9p memory bug: https://github.com/openshift/os/issues/594
+    memory_default=3072
     # shellcheck disable=2031
     case $arch in
     # Power 8 page faults with 2G of memory in rpm-ostree