Increasing Memory Allocation  

GenePattern allocates memory to the server, to the "client" (the computer you are using to access GenePattern), and to individual modules. When a module fails with an out of memory error, you can try increasing the amount of memory allocated to the server, the client, or the module.

• Increasing Memory for Modules
• Increasing Memory for Visualizers
• Increasing Memory for the Server and/or Client

Increasing Memory for Modules

To increase the amount of memory allocated to a module written in Java or R, click Administration>Server Settings. The Programming Languages page (Programming Language Options) provides several options for increasing Java and R memory options.

Increasing Memory for Visualizers

Many GenePattern modules are run on the server. However, visualizers are applications that run on your computer, rather than on the GenePattern server. This means that you must have Java installed on your computer. For easy debugging, set your Java preferences so that the Java console displays.

The default visualizer memory limit is 512 MB. However, if you find that your visualizer repeatedly runs out of memory, you can try a few things to eliminate that error:

• Increase the visualizer memory limit in My Settings in GenePattern. (Note: In GenePattern 3.2.1, the My Settings options is ignored due to a bug. This bug is corrected in GenePattern 3.2.3 and later.)
• If you are an administrator and want to make this a global change, go to the genepattern.properties file and set the visualizer_java_flags to a higher value. For 32-bit Windows machines, this will reach a maximum of ~2 GB, but Macintosh, Unix, and 64-bit Windows machines should allow you to make use of a greater portion of your machine's available memory.
• Reduce the size of the data you are attempting to load into the viewer.

Increasing Memory for the Server and/or Client

To increase the amount of memory allocated to the server and/or the client, follow the instructions for your platform:

Mac OS X

1. Right-click on the file GenePattern/Tomcat/StartGenePatternServer (server) or the GenePatternClient/GenePattern Client (client).
2. Select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. The Contents directory should open in the finder.
3. In the Contents directory, double-click the Info.plist file. This should open the Property List Editor program.
4. Add the child VMOptions under the Java node.
5. Change the Class of the added VMOptions node to ‘Array’.
6. Add the child with Class 'String' with the value -Xmx512M. You can replace the value 512 with the maximum amount of memory in MB that you want the GenePattern Client to use.

Windows and Linux

1. Edit the configuration file GenePatternServer/StartGenePatternServer.lax (server) or GenePatternClient/GenePattern Client.lax (client).
2. In either file, look for the entries noted below and increase these values (for example, double the value) up to the maximum memory size of the machine you are using. (Note: Windows limits the total space available to a process to 2 GB. Some of that is used for overhead, so slightly less is really available to the JRE.)
   • lax.nl.java.option.java.heap.size.initial
   • lax.nl.java.option.java.heap.size.max

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