Jenkins Maven Build 137 Error

Question

I have a Maven project, which builds 6 separate Maven projects in Jenkins. The problem I face is that over the time the project build fails giving the 137 error code:

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Answer 1

I was running into the same behavior on our build server. The error is IMHO not associated with the maven memory settings (i.e. MAVEN_OPTS) but rather with the memory of the underlying (Linux) machine itself (which Jenkins runs on).

The (rejected) Jenkins issue https://jenkins-ci.org/issue/12035 gives more detail on this matter:

For reference the status code 137 (128 + 9) typically means (can differ between flavours of unix). That the process was terminated by receipt of a signal. In this case signal 9 which is SIGKILL and unblockable kill.

If this is the case the underlying machine/OS needs more virtual memory. This can be added by either adding physical memory or swap space as appropriate.

You should try to increase the virtual memory of your machine.

Note:
This also explains why a Jenkins restart (temporarily) fixes the issue.