When building repository metadata, Spacewalk can fail with Out of Memory issues. This is caused by the default Java memory settings for the Taskomatic daemon. The solution is to increase the JVM memory settings in the configuration file for the Taskomatic daemon /usr/share/rhn/config-defaults/rhn_taskomatic_daemon.conf.

Similar memory issues can also occur in the web interface if you have big data sets, such as a large number of servers or packages. The solution is to increase the Tomcat memory limits in the /etc/sysconfig/tomcat6 file. Edit the JAVA_OPTS environment variable, and increase the -Xms (the start or initial amount of memory) and -Xmx (the maximum amount of memory) parameters.