JAVA_OPTS is the standard environment variable that some servers and other java apps append to the call that executes the java command.
For example in tomcat if you define JAVA_OPTS='-Xmx1024m', the startup script will execute java org.apache.tomcat.Servert -Xmx1024m
If you are running in Linux/OSX, you can set the JAVA_OPTS, right before you call the startup script by doing
JAVA_OPTS='-Djava.awt.headless=true'
This will only last as long as the console is open. To make it more permanent you can add it to your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc file.
Just figured it out in Oracle Java the environmental variable is called: JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS
rather than JAVA_OPTS
Actually, you can, even though accepted answer saying that you can't.
There is a _JAVA_OPTIONS environment variable, more about it here
JAVA_OPTS is environment variable used by tomcat in its startup/shutdown script to configure params.
You can set it in linux by
export JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true"
JAVA_OPTS is not restricted to Tomcat’s Java process, but passed to all JVM processes running on the same machine.
Use CATALINA_OPTS if you specifically want to pass JVM arguments to Tomcat's servlet engine.
Source: Stackoverflow.com