outofmemory exception with sun java6 on debian squeeze, not openjdk

Question

I have a Tomcat6 server running on Debian squeeze.

I has been running for about a year with the same memorysettings, with openjdk-6.

Now, i'm wiring in some apache-poi excel export code, and i have some issues with fonts.

SO, i thought i'd try and switch to SUN's jdk to see if it was any different.

I installed sun's jvm with standard apt-get

apt-get install sun-java6-bin

, and switched using

update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

However, when i start tomcat, i get outofmemory, the server won't even start. If i switch back to openJDK, all works fine again.

I haven't had any memory issues on this server before, so it feels strange that the server suddenly won't start with sun's JDK.

Anybody have any clue as to why this might happen? Have i missed something?

EDIT: to clarify i naturally have set heap sizes etc. in tomcat. Currently running with:

-Xms256m -Xmx512m

Which as mentioned works in openSDK, outofmemory in sun-jdk...

Answer 1

If it is not about heap, try to increase permgen size with something like this: -XX:MaxPermSize=192m

Answer 2

At least with the versions I have running on my system, Open JDK has a higher default heap size (256 mb) than the Sun JVM (128 mb). Just set your max heap size explicitly (i.e. -Xmx256m) when starting Tomcat.