Maven Surefire plugin "Error occured in starting fork, check output in log"

Question

I get the following error

BUILD ERROR
Error occured in starting fork, check output in log

when using Maven 2.2.1 and Surefire plugin 2.11 while running junit test cases.

How can I fix it?

Launch your build with debug logs : add -X to your command line. — Jean-Philippe Briend, Feb 17 '12 at 12:00
This may also be due to the issue SUREFIRE-870, which is fixed in the 2.12.1 version of the plugin. — RyanHennig, Aug 29 '12 at 23:30
Possible duplicate question: [Strategy for debugging surefire “The forked VM terminated without saying properly goodbye. VM crash or System.exit called ?”](https://stackoverflow.com/q/20642673/741249) — THelper, Nov 03 '18 at 07:18
For reference, I had this issue when using an old version of jacoco with java 11, and having --illegal-access=permit defined as a argline to surefire. Upgrading to jacoco 0.8.5 and removing the argline configuration fixed my issue. — Gavin Haynes, Jun 13 '20 at 03:02

score 34 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 23 '17 at 12:54

34

You need to setup surefire plugin to use <forkMode>once</forkMode> like this:

<plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.5</version>
            <configuration>
                <skipTests>false</skipTests>
                <testFailureIgnore>true</testFailureIgnore>
                <forkMode>once</forkMode>
            </configuration>
</plugin>

edited Mar 23 '17 at 12:54

dr0i

2,380
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answered Feb 17 '12 at 19:33

user1137387

1,933
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the option is deprecated, any updated combination to solve the issue? – Naman Aug 30 '17 at 04:03
24

I fixed it with 0 (instead of the deprecated forkMode). – Alban Mar 29 '18 at 10:16
1

notice that forkMode once is NOT the same as forkCount 0.From https://maven.apache.org/surefire/maven-surefire-plugin/examples/fork-options-and-parallel-execution.html, the equivalent would be forkCount 1 with reuseForks true. However, seems forkCount 0 fixes the issue. – Simon Ninon Jul 18 '18 at 06:00
2

with this you loose jacoco coverage on sonar...any other ideas because i m in the same situation. thanks – Mançaux Pierre-Alexandre Jan 08 '21 at 16:47

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered May 05 '22 at 10:58

I was facing the same issue on my local with maven-surefire-plugin plugin.

After adding <forkCount>0</forkCount> to maven-surefire-plugin plugin it worked for me.

        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <argLine>-Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m ${surefireArgLine}</argLine>
                <includes>
                    <include>**/*Test.java</include>
                </includes>
                <forkCount>0</forkCount>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 28 '21 at 15:27

encountered the same issue

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.22.1</version>
    <configuration>
        <useSystemClassLoader>false</useSystemClassLoader>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

set "useSystemClassLoader as false"

Maven Surefire plugin "Error occured in starting fork, check output in log"

3 Answers3

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