Duration of Excessive GC Time in “java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: GC overhead limit exceeded”

Question

Occasionally, somewhere between once every 2 days to once every 2 weeks, my application crashes in a seemingly random location in the code with: java.lang.OutOfMemoryE

Answer 1

The >98% would be measured over the same period in which less than 2% of memory is recovered.

It's quite possible that there is no fixed period for this. For instance, if the OOM check would be done after every 1,000,000 object live checks. The time that takes would be machine-dependent.

You most likely can't "solve" your problem by adding -XX:-UseGCOverheadLimit. The most likely result is that your application will slow to a crawl, use a bit more of memory, and then hit the point where the GC simply does not recover any memory anymore. Instead, fix your memory leaks and then (if still needed) increase your heap size.