Limit Java Heap Space for play framework globaly

Question

I have a very old linux system and installed java and play framework. When I run java I get:

java -version Error occurred during initialization of VM Could not reserve enough space for object heap Could not create the Java virtual machine. 

So I limited the java heap space in application.conf:

jvm.memory=-Xmx256M -Xms256M 

With that setting I can run play test, play run etc....

But I cannot run:

play dependencies  ~        _            _  ~  _ __ | | __ _ _  _| | ~ | '_ \| |/ _' | || |_| ~ |  __/|_|\____|\__ (_) ~ |_|            |__/    ~ ~ play! 1.2.1, http://www.playframework.org ~ Error occurred during initialization of VM Could not reserve enough space for object heap Could not create the Java virtual machine. 

Is there a global configuration file or environment variable where I can limit java heap space globaly for play framework?

Update: Also the following is not working:

play dependencies -Xmx256M -Xms256M ~        _            _  ~  _ __ | | __ _ _  _| | ~ | '_ \| |/ _' | || |_| ~ |  __/|_|\____|\__ (_) ~ |_|            |__/    ~ ~ play! 1.2.1, http://www.playframework.org ~ Error occurred during initialization of VM Could not reserve enough space for object heap Could not create the Java virtual machine. 

Update 2:

Memory:

ulimit -a core file size          (blocks, -c) 0 data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited pending signals                 (-i) 1024 max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 32 max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited open files                      (-n) 1024 pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8 POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200 stack size              (kbytes, -s) 10240 cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited max user processes              (-u) 38912 virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited file locks                      (-x) unlimited 

Limits:

cat /proc/meminfo  MemTotal:      4139312 kB MemFree:        332988 kB Buffers:        105252 kB Cached:        1705644 kB SwapCached:          4 kB Active:        2566216 kB Inactive:       625032 kB HighTotal:      786432 kB HighFree:         1728 kB LowTotal:      3352880 kB LowFree:        331260 kB SwapTotal:     4192956 kB SwapFree:      4168224 kB Dirty:             368 kB Writeback:           0 kB Mapped:        1672180 kB Slab:           570864 kB CommitLimit:   6262612 kB Committed_AS:  4075144 kB PageTables:      19884 kB VmallocTotal:   303096 kB VmallocUsed:     10400 kB VmallocChunk:   292648 kB 

BR,

Rene

Answer 1

Play does not appear to pick up the jvm.memory settings for dependencies or even test command. One way to force it to use specific JVM settings would be to use _JAVA_OPTIONS.

For example:

export _JAVA_OPTIONS="-Xms800m -Xmx1500m -XX:PermSize=64m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m" play test 

or

play deps 

and you should see

~        _            _  ~  _ __ | | __ _ _  _| | ~ | '_ \| |/ _' | || |_| ~ |  __/|_|\____|\__ (_) ~ |_|            |__/    ~ ~ play! 1.2.3, http://www.playframework.org ~ framework ID is test ~ ~ Running in test mode ~ Ctrl+C to stop ~  Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -Xms800m -Xmx1500m -XX:PermSize=64m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m Listening for transport dt_socket at address: 8000 

Note that this would apply those settings to all java programs run on that terminal where _JAVA_OPTIONS is set.

Answer 2

After googling more around I found this discussion. The problem is, that my Linux System is running in an openvz container:

The reason why Java complains is because on start up, it sees that the machine has more than 2 GB of RAM, so it starts up in server mode, which tries to allocate all the memory, which then fails because it is inside a VPS.

I could fix the java startup problem by changing /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_26/jre/lib/i386/jvm.cfg from:

-client IF_SERVER_CLASS -server -server KNOWN -hotspot ALIASED_TO -client -classic WARN -native ERROR -green ERROR 

to:

#-client IF_SERVER_CLASS -server -client KNOWN -server KNOWN -hotspot ALIASED_TO -client -classic WARN -native ERROR -green ERROR 

Now I can run any play command. Maybe this helps other people having similar problems related to container based virtualization.

BR, Rene