java out of memory then exit

Question

I have a piece of software that has to analyze big files. Constraining the input or giving infinite memory is not an option, so I have to live with flying OOMEs. Because the OOME only kills the Thread, my software runs in some crappy state.

From outside everything looks okay because the process is running but on the inside it's braindead.

I would like to pull the plug on it. But how can I do this?

Catching a OOME does not guranteee that the next line of code will be executed. e.g System.exit(9). So the JVM has to notice OOME and destory itself.

Is their some vm option for this?

"Catching a OOME does not guranteee that the next line of code will be executed." You have a reference for that? — aioobe
– aioobe, Commented May 17, 2011 at 6:46

Peter Lawrey · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-17 06:56:48Z

8

When you get an OOME you can be very low on memory and logging doesn't always work. One way around this is to have a shutdown method which holds some memory it doesn't release until its shutting down.

e.g.

 private static byte[] lastResort = new byte[256*1024];
 public static void handleOOME(OutOfMemoryError oome) {
     lastResort = null;
     try {
        LOG.fatal("Dying after ", oome);
     } finally {
        System.exit(-1);
     }
  }

answered May 17, 2011 at 6:56

Peter Lawrey

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3 Comments

Joachim Sauer Over a year ago

Interesting approach! Do you have that in production somewhere?

Yngve Sneen Lindal Over a year ago

Brave, exotic, outrageous :p

Peter Lawrey Over a year ago

@JoachimSauer I did use this in production with 64KB reserved.

AlikElzin-kilaka · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-23 13:04:36Z

3

You can use -XX:+ExitOnOutOfMemoryError - supported by Java 8 update 92.

You can also use -XX:+CrashOnOutOfMemoryError to get the core dump for further investigation.

You can also use -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError to generate a heap dump on OOME for further investigation.

Source: this and this.

answered Dec 23, 2018 at 13:04

AlikElzin-kilaka

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Comments

Stephen C · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-17 07:05:15Z

2

So the JVM has to notice OOME and destroy itself. Is their some vm option for this?

No there is not.

However, I have to question your assumption that you cannot catch an OutOfMemoryError and and immediately call System.exit() in the exception handler.

In practice it should work. The only potential problem is if you have called Runtime.setRunFinalizersOnExit(true) ... and even that is ignored if you exit with a non-zero exit status.

(The caveat about catching OOME's and other random Error exceptions is that the JVM may not be in a fit state to continue executing. But calling System.exit(nonzero) ain't doing that!)

edited May 17, 2011 at 7:05

answered May 17, 2011 at 6:57

Stephen C

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3 Comments

Adam Over a year ago

It does work, I've written a Swing program that catches an OutOfMemoryError then puts a message to the screen about it.

Joachim Sauer Over a year ago

The act of catching an OOME several levels down the call stack might free enough memory for some basic logging/error handling (because the GC roots from the call stacks disappear).

Stephen C Over a year ago

That is true, and @Peter Lawrey's answer is another approach. (I've seen it in other contexts. For instances, some JVMs do this kind of thing to reserve space for creating the OOME and its stack frames.)

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