Increasing Java Heap size on Virtual server?

Question

Peeps,

I'm hosting our dev env on a virtual server over at Mediatemple - the $50 bucks a month kind. Our application does some fairly memory intensive processing and on the last run, ran into the OutofMemError.

Apparently increasing the JVM size using the usual methods of setting JAVA_OPT or CATALINA_OPT in the setenv.sh file doesnt take. Upon startup of tomcat, it throws the unable to create JVM... error.

My setenv.sh file has the following:

export CATALINA_OPTS='-Xms512m -Xmx1024m'

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I wonder whether the environment you're running in has set an explicit limit on the amount of memory your process is allowed to use, and even your minimum value is exceeding that - hence the inability to create the JVM.

I suggest you ask the hosting company what restrictions they put on memory.

If you make the limits far more modest (e.g. 64M and 128M) does Tomcat start? (I realise this may well not be enough for you, but it would help to diagnose the problem.)

Answer 2

If its a hosting provider, most likely they limit you the amount of RAM you are allowed to use in your part of the server? I would enable the JMX service and use jconsole.exe to try to attach to the JVM to see its properties.

set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8001,server=y,suspend=n