Binary content lists and out-of-memory errors.

Rhythmyx Technical Discussion
1

Hello there all,

I have a couple of content lists that contain binary files and these often fail to publish due to an out of memory error. This can knock out the entire edition. My uneducated guess is that the cause is that there are a couple of files in these lists that are too large, 20mb in some cases.

Is there a recommended limit on the binary file size or are there any other parameters/factors that can affect this problem?

I am using Rhythmyx 5.7 on Windows 2000 Server and MSSQL Server.

Thanks in advance for you help!

Best wishes,

Rich

2

Your guess is correct. Not sure if there’s a limit to file upload size. We are using Rx 6 and the way to deal with this is by adding a config file to Rx tree root.
Create a text file named “RhythmyxServer.ja”. In it, add a line
-Xmx1234M

Numberr 1234 here represents the number of working megabytes allocated to Rx. Not sure but I think default is 1024, and you want to increase it. This obviously depends on memory available on your server. (There’s a way to review memory resources on running Rx server but I forgot how.)

I’m sure Percussionistas will be able to fill in the gaps in my post.

3

This has happened here as well, in Rx 5.7, a large Powerpoint binary killed the full publish with a java heap space error.
With Tech Support, we tried all kinds of fixes: increasing memory on the server, clearing java cache, reducing maxrowsperpage in the Content List, etc, but in the end I got the user to convert the file to PDF which reduced the filesize considerably, and got the full publish up and running again. This doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue in Rx 6.5.2 (at least not yet), but CMS users have been told to use PDF wherever, particularly as it is a cross-platform format and is accessible to anyone, anywhere. It also reduces the risk of having large binaries clogging up the system.

4

Hi Rich

In terms of increasing the memory for the publisher you need to make a change to the Rhythmyx/AppServer/bin/catalina.bat file.

Directly below the:

set startArg=start

You need to add the line:

set CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx512m

updating the Xms and Xmx values to the amount of memory you want to allocate. By default it’s 64mb.

You will need to stop and restart the Percussion Application Server for these changes to take place.

Cheers
James

5

Thanks everyone - these are VERY helpful responses. Lots for me to think about here. I’ll try a few things and report back with my findings.

Best wishes,

Rich Barrett-Small
Web Developer
Victoria & Albert Museum

6

Hi James,

Just one thing - should I edit Rhythmyx/AppServer/bin/catalina.bat on the publishing server or the main application server ( we have a separate publishing server ).

Thanks!

Rich Barrett-Small
Web Developer
Victoria & Albert Museum