tomcat java memory consumption

[Fabian Lienert <lienert@mitlinks.ch>]

dear list members,

on a debian cluster running an opencms project with tomcat 4.1.24 and j2sdk1.4.2
we are experiencing memory problems.

there are 2 GB of memory. after start of tomcat java memory use is growing and growing,
later, other running services like mysql is running out of memory.

we tried several versions of java, blackdown's, sun's and ibm's, configured
catalina.sh with serveral options to reduce java's memory use,
no effect.
limiting users memory use with ulimit has no effect either.

any pointer appreciated!