Due to typo in runtime/arguments.cpp JVM reports that MaxTenuringThreshold have incorrect value if InitialTenuringThreshold > MaxTenuringThreshold:

$JAVA_HOME/bin/java -XX:InitialTenuringThreshold=15 -XX:MaxTenuringThreshold=0
MaxTenuringThreshold of 15 is invalid; must be between 0 and 0
Error: Could not create the Java Virtual Machine.
Error: A fatal exception has occurred. Program will exit.

Obviously, it should report that InitialTenuringThreshold has incorrect value.

Thus, fix is trivial:

diff -r d0afbee540e0 src/share/vm/runtime/arguments.cpp
--- a/src/share/vm/runtime/arguments.cpp Mon Aug 19 13:44:13 2013 +0200
+++ b/src/share/vm/runtime/arguments.cpp Tue Aug 20 13:41:20 2013 +0400
@@ -2189,7 +2189,7 @@
   // the "age" field in the oop header is 4 bits; do not want to pull in markOop.hpp
   // just for that, so hardcode here.
   status = status && verify_interval(MaxTenuringThreshold, 0, 15, "MaxTenuringThreshold");
- status = status && verify_interval(InitialTenuringThreshold, 0, MaxTenuringThreshold, "MaxTenuringThreshold");
+ status = status && verify_interval(InitialTenuringThreshold, 0, MaxTenuringThreshold, "InitialTenuringThreshold");
   status = status && verify_percentage(TargetSurvivorRatio, "TargetSurvivorRatio");
   status = status && verify_percentage(MarkSweepDeadRatio, "MarkSweepDeadRatio");