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java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

February 12th, 2011

I was just contacted concerning this Java memory problem, here is how you can get rid of it.

The amount of Ram for an Java application is limited by the JVM. To provide more memory to a single application you can start your Java process with two more parameters, like:

java -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m YOUR_JAVA_CALL

This allows Java to use up to 1024 MB. Here -Xms specifies the initial heap size, while -Xmx determines the maximum size. For machines with much more mem you might use g instead of m to set the size in gig’s. So -Xmx10g limits the amount of RAM to 10 GB.

Of course it’s annoying to apply these parameters to all your Java runs, so to change this behavior user-wide, you may create an alias like:

alias java='java -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m'

or better: Tell it to the Java Plugin Control Panel! Using Xfce you can find this tool in your panel’s menu in the Settings section. Gnome users may look in System > Preferences. If you don’t want to move your mouse you can also run ControlPanel from your terminal. This opens a window, default parameters can be applied in the tab Java, click View… and add your parameters to the Runtime Parameters column. This tool afterwards writes something like the following line to $HOME/.java/deployment/deployment.properties :

deployment.javaws.jre.0.args=-Xmx9234m -Xms9234m

So advanced users craving for trouble may edit this file on it’s own :-P

MySQL upgrade failed

February 11th, 2011

Still upgrading some of our servers from lenny to squeeze, actually I run into MySQL trouble…

While upgrading from the package mysql-server 5.0.51a-24+lenny5 -> 5.1.49-3 aptitude told me the following:

Setting up mysql-server-5.1 (5.1.49-3) ...
Stopping MySQL database server: mysqld.
Starting MySQL database server: mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . failed!
invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.1 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server:
 mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.1; however:
  Package mysql-server-5.1 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 mysql-server-5.1
 mysql-server

Mmh, a look into the /var/log/syslog pointed to the following errors:

Feb 11 20:50:11 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13219]: 0 processes alive and '/usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf ping' resulted in
Feb 11 20:50:11 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13219]: ^G/usr/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
Feb 11 20:50:11 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13219]: error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)'
Feb 11 20:50:11 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13219]: Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists!
Feb 11 20:50:11 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13219]:
[...]
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld_safe: Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:50:59 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld: /usr/sbin/mysqld: Table 'mysql.plugin' doesn't exist
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:50:59 [ERROR] Can't open the mysql.plugin table. Please run mysql_upgrade to create it.
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:50:59  InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 657837804
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:50:59 [ERROR] /usr/sbin/mysqld: unknown option '--skip-bdb'
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:50:59 [ERROR] Aborting
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld:
Feb 11 20:50:59 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:50:59  InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
[...]
Feb 11 20:51:05 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:51:05  InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 0 657837804
Feb 11 20:51:05 HOST mysqld: 110211 20:51:05 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete
Feb 11 20:51:05 HOST mysqld:
[...]
Feb 11 20:51:05 HOST mysqld_safe: mysqld from pid file /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid ended
Feb 11 20:51:14 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13584]: 0 processes alive and '/usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf ping' resulted in
Feb 11 20:51:14 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13584]: ^G/usr/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
Feb 11 20:51:14 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13584]: error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)'
Feb 11 20:51:14 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13584]: Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists!
Feb 11 20:51:14 HOST /etc/init.d/mysql[13584]:

Many messages at once.. To make a long story short the main problem is this line:

Feb 11 20:50:59 vs-inf-www mysqld: 110211 20:50:59 [ERROR] /usr/sbin/mysqld: unknown option '--skip-bdb'

So edit your /etc/mysql/my.cnf and comment the following line (in my configuration it’s line 94):

skip-bdb

That’s it, retry to configure the new version and everything will turn out all right.

Apache not parsing PHP files

February 10th, 2011

I just had a confusing problem: instead of interpreting PHP-scripts in our webserver’s userdir apache serves them for download!

It’s caused by an upgrade from lenny to squeeze and I spend a lot of ours with fixing.

This is really a serious problem, these sites aren’t able to read for those people/search engines etc. that are browsing and, more fatal, if clients are able to access the PHP code of our students/staff they might explore security issues or passwords stored in these PHP files, so first of all I disabled the public access to the webserver.

So what was the problem? When I recognized that phpMyAdmin and other not userdir related stuff still works fine, I searched for issues that differ for userdirs. At long last I took a look into the libapache2-mod-php5 config file located in /etc/apache2/mods-available/php5.conf :

<IfModule mod_php5.c>
    <FilesMatch "\\.ph(p3?|tml)$">
        SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
    </FilesMatch>
    <FilesMatch "\\.phps$">
        SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-source
    </FilesMatch>
    # To re-enable php in user directories comment the following lines
    # (from <IfModule ...> to </IfModule>.) Do NOT set it to On as it
    # prevents .htaccess files from disabling it.
    <IfModule mod_userdir.c>
        <Directory /home/*/public_html>
            php_admin_value engine Off
        </Directory>
    </IfModule>
</IfModule>

As you can see, PHP is disabled if the userdir module was enabled… Disgusting! Commenting these lines out switched PHP for users on. Very annoying!

It's squeeezzed

February 6th, 2011

Yes, Debian’s 6th release, codename squeeze, has become stable yesterday!

Those of you following Debian on twitter should have noticed yet, they announced it in about 4 million tweets ;-)

To mark the occasion the also redesigned the whole web presence, just take a look at their new layout!

This article is just a small THANK YOU to the whole Debian team, they are working hard to make your life much more comfortable! Great work guys!

By the way I send some greetings to all the administrators out there running Debian. Just have a look at figure 1 :-P

Martin Scharm

stuff. just for the records.

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