Troubleshooting: WebSphere Commerce feature enablement fails with a NullPointerException or OutOfMemoryError

When you attempt to enable a feature, the operation fails with a NullPointerException or an OutOfMemoryError.

Problem

In your enablement log you see errors similar to the following:

WebSphere:cell=WC_demo_cell,node=WC_demo_node,server=server1+WebSphere:cell=WC_demo_cell,node=WC_demo_node,server=webserver1
WASX7017E: Exception received while running file "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/CommerceServer70/components/common/temp/enableFeature.jacl"; exception information: java.lang.NullPointerException: java.lang.NullPointerException

If you have WebSphere Application Server trace enabled in wsadmin.properties file, you might also find the following exceptions:

[wsadmin] Not output parameters
[wsadmin] Update of WC_demo has started.
[wsadmin] ADMA5010E: An error occurred extracting the application at /usr/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/
demo/wstemp/wstemp/app_119e554b1f9/ext: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError
[wsadmin] ADMA5011I: The cleanup of the temp directory for application WC_demo is complete.

Solution

This error is known to occur if the Java virtual machine (JVM) for the WebSphere Application Server administrative server exhausts its heap and runs out of memory.

Restart the WebSphere Application Server administrative server to resolve the immediate problem.

You should also consider increasing the maximum heap size for the WebSphere Application Server administration server's JVM. See JVM performance tuning.