The WebLogic Server encountered a critical failure

ERROR:-

INFO: Notification event sent for activating changes.
***************************************************************************
The WebLogic Server encountered a critical failure
Reason: PermGen space
***************************************************************************

So I received this error while trying to start Admin Server. Even though how much I increase MaxPermSize, this error kept on coming.

CAUSE:-

Well the error came because by mistake I setup USER_MEM_ARGS in setDomainEnv.sh.(Well stop laughing at me :( . Remember "To err is human" ) This variable  override the standard memory arguments (MEM_ARGS) passed to java.

USER_MEM_ARGS="-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/./urandom"
export USER_MEM_ARGS

Since I did not pass any other required JVM parameter. All the default values were used by JVM (Admin Server) while coming up which was insufficient.

I kept on hitting the error even though I increased MaxPermSize to 4GB :( Coz this paramter was part of MEM_ARGS which was overridden by USER_MEM_ARGS.

SOLUTION:-

Remove the USER_MEM_ARGS or set is as NULL (whatever you prefer :P )

USER_MEM_ARGS=""
export USER_MEM_ARGS

( Also I am not sure why but some how even after removing the USER_MEM_ARGS, it was still overriding MEM_ARGS. May be the value got saved in some GHOST cache. Open new putty session and then try starting the Admin Server )