All,

We are running a J2EE application on WebLogic server 9.2 MP2 with a jrockit 64-bit JVM (27.3.1) on Solaris 10.

We call use runtime.exec to call an executable called jfmerge to create PDF documents.

We have found that in Solaris, when runtime.exec is called, a duplicate JVM is temporarily spawned to kick off the jfmerge process. While this is inefficient (our JVM is 5 GB, thus the duplicated shell JVM is also 5 GB), the major problem lies in the fact that when there is heavy load on this functionality (PDF generation) in our application, sometimes the duplicated JVM never exits.

When the JVM hangs, the servers create large issues (extreme application slowness and terminated user sessions) as the entire duplicate JVM get's all of its 5 GB of process size written to disk swap.

We have noted the following hung thread correlated with a hung JVM process until the process is manually killed:

"[STUCK] ExecuteThread: '17' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'" id=3463 idx=0x158 tid=3460 prio=1 alive, in native, daemon at jrockit/io/FileNativeIO.readBytesPinned(Ljava/io/FileDescriptor;[BII)I(Native Method) at jrockit/io/FileNativeIO.readBytes(FileNativeIO.java:30) at java/io/FileInputStream.readBytes([BII)I(FileInputStream.java) at java/io/FileInputStream.read(FileInputStream.java:194) at java/lang/UNIXProcess$DeferredCloseInputStream.read(UNIXProcess.java:227) at java/io/BufferedInputStream.fill(BufferedInputStream.java:218) at java/io/BufferedInputStream.read(BufferedInputStream.java:235) ^-- Holding lock: java/io/BufferedInputStream@0xfffffffec6510470[thin lock] at gov/v3/common/formgeneration/sessionbean/FormsBean.getProcessStatus(FormsBean.java:809) at gov/v3/common/formgeneration/sessionbean/FormsBean.createPDF(FormsBean.java:750) at gov/v3/common/formgeneration/sessionbean/FormsBean.getTemplateDetails(FormsBean.java:450) at gov/v3/common/formgeneration/sessionbean/FormsBean.generateSinglePDF(FormsBean.java:1371) at gov/v3/common/formgeneration/sessionbean/FormsBean.generatePDF(FormsBean.java:263) at gov/v3/common/formgeneration/sessionbean/FormsBean.endorseDocument(FormsBean.java:2377) at gov/v3/common/formgeneration/sessionbean/Forms_qaco28_EOImpl.endorseDocument(Forms_qaco28_EOImpl.java:214) at gov/v3/delegates/common/FormsAndNoticesDelegate.endorseDocument(FormsAndNoticesDelegate.java:128) at gov/v3/actions/common/EndorseDocumentAction.executeRequest(EndorseDocumentAction.java:68) at gov/v3/fwk/controller/struts/action/V3CommonDispatchAction.dispatchToExecuteMethod(V3CommonDispatchAction.java:532) at gov/v3/fwk/controller/struts/action/V3CommonDispatchAction.executeBaseAction(V3CommonDispatchAction.java:336) at gov/v3/fwk/controller/struts/action/V3BaseDispatchAction.execute(V3BaseDispatchAction.java:69) at org/apache/struts/action/RequestProcessor.processActionPerform(RequestProcessor.java:484) at gov/v3/fwk/controller/struts/requestprocessor/V3TilesRequestProcessor.processActionPerform(V3TilesRequestProcessor.java:384) at org/apache/struts/action/RequestProcessor.process(RequestProcessor.java:274) at org/apache/struts/action/ActionServlet.process(ActionServlet.java:1482) at org/apache/struts/action/ActionServlet.doGet(ActionServlet.java:507) at gov/v3/fwk/controller/struts/servlet/V3ControllerServlet.doGet(V3ControllerServlet.java:110) at javax/servlet/http/HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:743) at javax/servlet/http/HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:856) at weblogic/servlet/internal/StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:227) at weblogic/servlet/internal/StubSecurityHelper.invokeServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:125) at weblogic/servlet/internal/ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:283) at weblogic/servlet/internal/ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:175) at weblogic/servlet/internal/WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.run(WebAppServletContext.java:3231) at weblogic/security/acl/internal/AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321) at weblogic/security/service/SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:121) at weblogic/servlet/internal/WebAppServletContext.securedExecute(WebAppServletContext.java:2002) at weblogic/servlet/internal/WebAppServletContext.execute(WebAppServletContext.java:1908) at weblogic/servlet/internal/ServletRequestImpl.run(ServletRequestImpl.java:1362) at weblogic/work/ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:209) at weblogic/work/ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:181) at jrockit/vm/RNI.c2java(JJJJJ)V(Native Method) -- end of trace

We would like to do a couple of things:

1.) Prevent the spawning of a duplicate JVM, as we do not need any of it's functions when executing the simple jfmerge executable, and it creates massive overhead.

2.) In the short term at least prevent this duplicate JVM from handing indefinitely.