Builds fail due to insufficient memore allocation

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Symptoms

Bamboo builds will fail with the exception,

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/home/pdp11/bin/maven/bin/mvn" (in directory "/home/pdp11/bamboo-home/xml-data/build-dir/PDP-CORE"): java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:459) at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:593) at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor467.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Execute$Java13CommandLauncher.exec(Execute.java:834) at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Execute.launch(Execute.java:435) at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Execute.execute(Execute.java:449) at com.atlassian.bamboo.command.Command.executeCommand(Command.java:80) at com.atlassian.bamboo.builder.AbstractBuilder.build(AbstractBuilder.java:195) at com.atlassian.bamboo.build.pipeline.tasks.ExecuteBuildTask.call(ExecuteBuildTask.java:48) at edu.emory.mathcs.backport.java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:176) at edu.emory.mathcs.backport.java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:987) at edu.emory.mathcs.backport.java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:528) at com.atlassian.bamboo.build.pipeline.concurrent.NamedThreadFactory$1.run(NamedThreadFactory.java:31) at edu.emory.mathcs.backport.java.util.concurrent.helpers.ThreadHelpers$1.run(ThreadHelpers.java:34) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Caused by: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory at java.lang.UNIXProcess.<init>(UNIXProcess.java:148) at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(ProcessImpl.java:65) at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:452) ... 16 more

Cause

There isn't enough hardware memory on the machine and after server uptime of day or so, Bamboo builds started failing as memory was not available.

Resolution

Increase the physical memory on Bamboo machine.

Updated on April 8, 2025

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