How to detect the cause of OutofMemoryError?

Question

I have a complaint that a server application of mine is crashing on high load.
It is a web app running in Tomcat 5.
I see the thread dumps and I see that th

Answer 1

Fix

Followed the IBM technote java.lang.OutOfMemoryError while creating new threads, specifically 'ulimit' command to increase the value from the default 1024.

Symptom

[2/25/15 12:47:34:629 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Failed to create a thread: retVal -1073741830, errno 11
[2/25/15 12:47:34:630 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at java.lang.Thread.startImpl(Native Method)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:630 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at java.lang.Thread.start(Thread.java:936)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:630 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.InternalSystemBundle.stop(InternalSystemBundle.java:251)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:630 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.RuntimeBundleActivator.shutdownEclipse(RuntimeBundleActivator.java:54)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:630 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ServerCollaborator$ShutdownHook$1.run(ServerCollaborator.java:878)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:630 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ws.security.auth.ContextManagerImpl.runAs(ContextManagerImpl.java:5459)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:631 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ws.security.auth.ContextManagerImpl.runAsSystem(ContextManagerImpl.java:5585)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:631 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ServerCollaborator$ShutdownHook.run(ServerCollaborator.java:850)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:631 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ServerCollaborator$StopAction.alarm(ServerCollaborator.java:809)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:631 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ejs.util.am._Alarm.run(_Alarm.java:133)
[2/25/15 12:47:34:631 EST] 00000049 SystemErr     R     at com.ibm.ws.util.ThreadPool$Worker.run(ThreadPool.java:1815)

Environment

CentOS 6.6 64 bit IBM WAS 8.5.0.2 64 bit

References

• Guidelines for setting ulimits (WebSphere Application Server)