JAVA_OPTS...

English Programming/Scripting
1

I am trying to increase the memory for my JVM heap and permgen on my Tomcat 6 server. I was getting out of memory errors whenever I tried to run a second webapp. I am very new at this, but to my understanding the method is to put your JVM startup switch settings in the JAVA_OPTS variable. This is my switch:

JAVA_OPTS="-Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m"

I put this it /etc/bash.bashrc. On startup I still get


...
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
...
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
...

These webapps both run fine on their own in Tomcat, but not together.

So my questions are:

  1. Is my JAVA_OPTS in the correct place?
  2. How can I tell how much memory the JVM is actually using?

Would appreciate any ideas!

2

Go to the bin directory where tomcat is installed and do the following:

  1. cp catalina.sh catalina.sh-today’s-date

Add number 2 in your catalina.sh

  1. CATALINA_OPTS="-Xms128m -Xmx128m"

  2. bounce tomcat

// Note: assuming your local machine is running
Tomcat on port 8080
4. http://localhost:8080/manager/status

Regards,
Someone316

3

Although that works, it’s a dirty shortcut :-).

Your change to /etc/bash.bashrc should work if you add

export CATALINA_OPTS="..."

Without “export” the variable will not be visible. If you, or any other user, are starting/stopping tomcat then ~/.bashrc is a better place in my opinion.

Just one more note, you can “quickly” test a setup by running tomcat with the command

$> CATALINA_OPTS="-Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m" catalina.sh run

or

$> export CATALINA_OPTS="-Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m"
$> catalina.sh run
4

Really, please explain? How would this work with multiple tomcat instances running on the same host with different CATALINA_OPTS? Making the changes in catalina.sh seems valid, this way you isolate it to the given tomcat instance.

Regards,
Someone316

5

Its just my general policy of not customizing installed files.

Anyway, tomcat provides many options to override settings without editing the default files. Look for the CATALINA_BASE property. It allows you to have a single installation and multiple configurations (server.xml, webapps, etc).

$> CATALINA_BASE="path1" CATALINA_OPTS="-Xmx128m" CATALINA_PID="instance1.pid" catalina.sh start
$> CATALINA_BASE="path2" CATALINA_OPTS="-Ddebug ..." CATALINA_PID="instance2.pid" catalina.sh start
6

Thanks for the responses, guys! Will post later…