runtime.exec - How to solve "java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory" calling Runtime#exec()?

Question

On my system I can't run a simple Java application that start a process. I don't know how to solve.

Could you give me some hints how to solve?

The program is:

[root@newton sisma-acquirer]# cat prova.java
import java.io.IOException;

public class prova {

   public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        Runtime.getRuntime().exec("ls");
    }

}

The result is:

[root@newton sisma-acquirer]# javac prova.java && java -cp . prova
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "ls": java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory
        at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:474)
        at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:610)
        at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:448)
        at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:345)
        at prova.main(prova.java:6)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory
        at java.lang.UNIXProcess.<init>(UNIXProcess.java:164)
        at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(ProcessImpl.java:81)
        at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:467)
        ... 4 more

Configuration of the system:

[root@newton sisma-acquirer]# java -version
java version "1.6.0_0"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.5) (fedora-18.b16.fc10-i386)
OpenJDK Client VM (build 14.0-b15, mixed mode)
[root@newton sisma-acquirer]# cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)

EDIT: Solution This solves my problem, I don't know exactly why:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory

Up-votes for who is able to explain :)

Additional informations, top output:

top - 13:35:38 up 40 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.43, 0.19, 0.12
Tasks: 129 total,   1 running, 128 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  1.5%us,  0.5%sy,  0.0%ni, 94.8%id,  3.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1033456k total,   587672k used,   445784k free,    51672k buffers
Swap:  2031608k total,        0k used,  2031608k free,   188108k cached

Additional informations, free output:

[root@newton sisma-acquirer]# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1033456     588548     444908          0      51704     188292
-/+ buffers/cache:     348552     684904
Swap:      2031608          0    2031608

Answer 1

This is the solution but you have to set:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory