JIRA Crashes with "Failed to fork OS thread" Error Message
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
The JIRA instance crashes a couple of times due to OutOfMemoryError. However, a "Failed to fork OS thread" error message is shown instead of a common insufficient memory exception.
The following appears in the atlassian-jira.log:
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Cause:
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Failed to fork OS thread
Stack Trace: [hide]
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Failed to fork OS thread
at java.lang.Thread.startImpl(Native Method)
at java.lang.Thread.start(Thread.java:966)
at jcifs.util.transport.Transport.connect(Transport.java:171)
at jcifs.smb.SmbTransport.connect(SmbTransport.java:290)
at jcifs.smb.SmbSession.getChallenge(SmbSession.java:146)
...
Cause
This error occurs when you are using IBM WebSphere Application Server. It indicates that the maximum number of concurrent VM's is exceeded.
Resolution
Quoting the IBM article which covers this error: You can avoid this error by inserting a very small delay between starting successive threads (even as small as 1 millisecond). This delay can cause performance to decrease a little, but the error would disappear.
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