Problem Definition

Under rare circumstances Jira can recover from an OutOfMemoryError as experienced in some our support cases. In general after java.lang.OutOfMemoryError, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) will likely be in an unstable state and hence it is essential to restart your JIRA applications immediately.

Suggested Solution

This request is for Jira to notify administrators in some fashion after restarting from an out of memory error that an out of memory error has occurred and what information to provide Atlassian for root cause analysis ( heap dump, core dump,. etc )

Workaround 

JDK 8 update 92 and later provide startup flags that will cause the application to crash after an out of memory error:

Two new JVM flags have been added:

• ExitOnOutOfMemoryError
  • When you enable this option, the JVM exits on the first occurrence of an out-of-memory error. It can be used if you prefer restarting an instance of the JVM rather than handling out of memory errors.

• CrashOnOutOfMemoryError
  • If this option is enabled, when an out-of-memory error occurs, the JVM crashes and produces text and binary crash files (if core files are enabled).

Add following option into JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS in setenv.sh:

-XX:+ExitOnOutOfMemoryError