That’s just false. The default config might set the JVM HEAP to 2GB (though I’m fairly certain it’s 1GB) but ES will start up with half a GB of heap with no issue.
It was the default behavior on my install, documented recommendation is half the system memory and the logs don’t provide useful info when the heap allocation fails.
Perhaps the upstream default is 1 GB but this was not the default, and there is much confusion on setting these correctly
What your system install does and whether the default is good for what you intend to do is a bit different from what the system allows. If you want to use a piece of software, you’re expected to somewhat understand what it does. At least reading the “setup” chapter of the documentation which explains which ENV var to set should be recommended. (I specifically link to the 1.7 docs to show that it’s been in there for quite some time) https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/1.7/...
The recommendation is btw: at most half of the systems memory, no more than 31g (due to how the jvm compresses heap pointers), and keep at least as much memory available for disk buffers/caches as you allocate to the heap.
