Home / ubuntu / Questions / 461705
Accepted
Private
Asked: 2014-05-07 02:41:35 +0800 CST

How to increase memory allocated to java? java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

  • 772

I have an Ubuntu server 12.04 using a reverse proxy so that tomcat runs on top of apache. And I have a confluence instance on that machine, and a ticket system. So nothing special.

Memory is 8GB that's more than enough for this use.

From time to time, and in the last few days more often my confluence page crashes.

The log (confluence\logs\catalina.2014-05-06) shows this :

SEVERE: Socket accept failed
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

So how can I avoid this? How can I give that process more memory.

java

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In my system I have edited the file

    /etc/init.d/tomcat

    with these rows

    HEAP="-Xms2048m -Xmx2048m" 
export JAVA_OPTS="$HEAP"

    After restart tomcat you can see in the status section the memory allocated

    • 8

  2. You can also do it in tomcat/bin/setenv.sh file and restart tomcat:

    export JAVA_OPTS="-Xms512m -Xmx1024m"
    • 3

  3. The reason for the error is due to the way Java allocates memory. Your applications are allowed to use only limited amount of memory. This limit is specified during the application startup.

    Allowed maximal size is set during the JVM launch by specifying JVM parameters such as -Xmx. If you do not explicitly set the sizes, platform-specific defaults will be used.

    So – the “java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space” error will be triggered when you try to add more data into the heap space area in memory, but the size of this data is larger than the JVM can accommodate in the Java heap space.

    So the obvious way is to increase (or add if missing) the maximal possible heap size specified via -Xmx parameter. But in many cases you are just hiding symptoms instead of solving the underlying problem. To see the full explanation of the java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space error, check out the Plumbr performance tuning site.

    • 1

  4. the answers didn't work for me, tried that and it worked :

    export _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Xmx4096m
    • 0