Tomcat Permgen error with CA Advanced Authentication.

Products

• CA Rapid App Security
• CA Advanced Authentication

Issue/Introduction

You may encounter an error in the Strong Authentication logs such as; 
                    ex:Error java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space

This indicates that the memory for Tomcat is out of memory. Some symptoms that you may have noticed is that Tomcat is locking up, and restarting services only helps for a short period of time. You will want to increase physical memory, and to do so follow the steps below. 

 

 

Environment

Release: ARCWFT05900-8-Arcot-WebFort-for Windows
Component:

Resolution

For windows and Tomcat 7

1. Go to [TOMCAT_HOME]/bin/tomcat7w.exe
2. Click the java tab
3. In your “Java Options” put  -XX:MaxPermSize=512m
4. 512m is the default memory, increase if needed.
5. Match permsize to your memory pool and max memory pool.
6. Put in an appropriate value for your thread stack size, it is in KB’s.
7. ex: for 512m pooling, I will use a 256kb thread stack, in my environment.
8. Restart Tomcat services.

 

For Linux

1. Go to [TOMCAT_HOME]/bin
2. Open catalina.sh
3. Input:   CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -server -Xms256m -Xmx1024m -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m"
4. Use the appropriate values for your environment, these are set to standard.
5. Restart Tomcat services

 

Additional Information

This issue could strictly be Tomcat running out of memory and you may just need to increase the memory from to Tomcat. However, this can run deeper. The memory on your machine may be running out failing to give the appropriate resources to tomcat and increasing the memory to tomcat may cause more issues to other parts to your system. CPU Utilization may also cause the memory issue to Tomcat. If the settings above do not work, further analysis on Tomcat, Java and the system should be done.