Java Class (PermGen) Memory Leak (Web Applications) - Generic Solution?

Question

I have a perm gen memory leak, that I know. Profiling using jvisualvm shows that when doing hot deployment (e.g. stop and start an application without killing the JVM, in to

Answer 1

There is an unsatisfiying but easy solution: Don't hotdeploy in production environments. You could setup a cluster of two servlet containers and them update one at a time with a restart.

Answer 2

Few pointers here as well, http://minmaxmim.blogspot.com/2010/01/javalangoutofmemoryerror-java-heap.html

also check the javalangoutofmemoryerror-permgen-space article.

Answer 3

The realities of frequent redeployments... Best you can do is increase the size of perm gen using -XX:MaxPermSize=256m. This may buy you some redeployments more per jvm restart. Or read on at http://my.opera.com/karmazilla/blog/2007/03/15/permgen-strikes-back

Beware that if the classloaders can't be gc-ed at all, fiddling with the jvm won't help at all. You'd better forget about frequent deployments, especially in production, for dev it's handy, nevertheless.

Answer 4

I used the method from this site and it helped. http://www.mkyong.com/tomcat/tomcat-javalangoutofmemoryerror-permgen-space/