JVM memory initializazion error after windows update

Question

Hi all, I have three Windows Server 2003 with 2 GB RAM.

• Server1 tomcat 5.5.25 jvm version SUN 1.6.0_11-b03
• Server2 tomcat 5.5.25 jvm version SUN 1.6.0_14-b08
• Server3 tomcat 6.0.18 jvm version SUN 1.6.0_14-b08

For the three servers JVM parameters are:

 -XX:MaxPermSize=256m
 -Dcatalina.base=C:\Apache Group\apache-tomcat-5.5.25
 -Dcatalina.home=C:\Apache Group\apache-tomcat-5.5.25
 -Djava.endorsed.dirs=C:\Apache Group\apache-tomcat-5.5.25\common\endorsed
 -Djava.io.tmpdir=C:\Apache Group\apache-tomcat-5.5.25\temp vfprintf
 -Xms512m
 -Xmx1024m

For some months everithing worked fine. Last friday we installed some windows updates. After the reboot tomcat doesn't start anymore, with error:

   Error occurred during initialization of VM
   Could not reserve enough space for object heap

We reduced the parameter -Xmx1024m to -Xmx768m and now tomcat starts. But we need greater max heap size What happened to our servers ? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Similar issue here http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t364972-vm-heap-reservation.html you might want to check for the effect of the specific patches installed in the update

Answer 2

Finally found it!!! The update KB956572 makes Tomcat crash if you specify more than 768M heap size in JVM aprameters. It's a killer update for Tomcat based web servers!