How to reduce JVM virtual memory usage?

Question

I have a Java program to run on Solaris 10 X86 with 2GB physical memory and 2GB swap.

The program runs fine in Linux 64-bit, it consumes only about 450MB memory.

However when it runs in Solaris, it always reports OutOfMemoryError, and I noticed that right before the error happens, it was trying to use > 4GB of virtual memory, which is definitely not possible on 32-bit system.

So why does JVM tries to use that much virtual memory? Is there a way to tell JVM not to use that much virtual memory?

Thank you.

Edit:

Thanks for everyone's opinions! Here is the complete error message:

#
# There is insufficient memory for the Java Runtime Environment to continue.
# Native memory allocation (malloc) failed to allocate 32756 bytes for ChunkPool::allocate
# Possible reasons:
#   The system is out of physical RAM or swap space
#   In 32 bit mode, the process size limit was hit
# Possible solutions:
#   Reduce memory load on the system
#   Increase physical memory or swap space
#   Check if swap backing store is full
#   Use 64 bit Java on a 64 bit OS
#   Decrease Java heap size (-Xmx/-Xms)
#   Decrease number of Java threads
#   Decrease Java thread stack sizes (-Xss)
#   Set larger code cache with -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=
# This output file may be truncated or incomplete.
#
#  Out of Memory Error (allocation.cpp:211), pid=1052, tid=16
#
# JRE version: 6.0_26-b03
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (20.1-b02 mixed mode solaris-x86 )

---------------  T H R E A D  ---------------

Current thread (0x081a3400):  JavaThread "C2 CompilerThread1" daemon

Solution 1

You might be passing parameters to the JVM that make it use this much memory.

Depending on the exact error - is it a heap space problem or a permgen space problem? - passing parameters to the jvm such as -Xms512m and -Xmx512m, or -XX:PermSize=128m and -XX:MaxPermSize=128m, might solve the problem on your system.

Solution 2

Try setting jvm param -Xmx1g to limit the usage of 1 gigabyte at most.