How to bump up the size of Ounce Security Analyst's (OSA) JVM heap

OSA is an Eclipse-based RCP application from Ounce Labs that you can use to scan applications for security vulnerabilities (e.g., XSS, SQL Injection, etc). You may want to bump up the amount of space allocated to OSA (and its worker process) if you are working with a large assessment.

To bump up the JVM heap,

1. edit $INSTALL_DIR/config/osa.cp
2. add or modify the -Xmx parameter to something large (but within your system constrainst). For example, on Windows (32-bit), try setting the max JVM heap size to around 1.5GB.

-Xmx1536m

You may have to lower that value if your JVM is unable to allocate that much memory (see message below).

Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

Keep dropping the -Xmx until you can start your JVM. You should be able to get slightly above 1.2GB without too much trouble.

3. On my RHEL Linux 5, I can bump up the max JVM to 3GB (-Xmx3g)
4. I have not tried setting the following on OSA on a Macbook Pro but I was able to bump the native HotSpot JVM that comes with Leopard OS X to 5GB by adding the following parameters

-d64 <= enable the 64-bit JVM
-Xmx5g

I will gladly test #4 for you if you have a new MBP handy - preferably 2.5GHz, 15" MBP, with 4GB memory or if you can wait, maybe one of the new MBPs to be announced Oct 14, 2008. I am hoping one of the new MBPs will be upgradable to 8GB memory. :)

An0n S3c