The RPM and Debian package distributions default to configuring the JVM to dump the heap on out of memory exceptions to /var/lib/elasticsearch. If this path is not suitable for storing heap dumps, you should modify the entry -XX:HeapDumpPath=/var/lib/elasticsearch in jvm.options to an alternate path. If you specify a filename instead of a directory, the JVM will repeatedly use the same file; this is one mechanism for preventing heap dumps from accumulating in the heap dump path. Alternatively, you can configure a scheduled task via your OS to remove heap dumps that are older than a configured age.

Note that the archive distributions do not configure the heap dump path by default. Instead, the JVM will default to dumping to the working directory for the Elasticsearch process. If you wish to configure a heap dump path, you should modify the entry #-XX:HeapDumpPath=/heap/dump/path in jvm.options to remove the comment marker # and to specify an actual path.