Configuring the JVM

On Linux and Unix hosts, configuring the JVM memory parameters involves modifying the service scripts that initialize the Jenkins daemon. For Debian/Ubuntu systems, the file you will need to modify is usually located in /etc/default/Jenkins.

For CentOS-based systems, the file you will need to modify is usually located in /etc/sysconfig/Jenkins.

Regardless of the operating system, the setting that lets us adjust the JVM options is the 'JAVA_ARGS=' property.

With the advent of Java 1.8, as mentioned earlier, there are some new and deprecated memory settings. The definitions of available memory options are described in table below:

Adjusting the memory setting for Java in Linux is simply a matter of adapting the JAVA_ARGS= property to contain the correct switches. An example of how to change the initial heap size property is shown here:

JAVA_ARGS=-Xmx=512m

Once you have completed the modifications to fit your hardware configuration, you will need to restart the Jenkins service to make it take effect.