JDK-4965918 : JVM Out of Memory Handling: print extra information to help application team
  • Type: Enhancement
  • Component: hotspot
  • Sub-Component: runtime
  • Affected Version: 1.4.2,1.4.2_05,6
  • Priority: P4
  • Status: Closed
  • Resolution: Fixed
  • OS: generic,solaris_8,windows_2000
  • CPU: generic,x86,sparc
  • Submitted: 2003-12-09
  • Updated: 2012-10-13
  • Resolved: 2005-06-03
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JDK 6
6 b39Fixed
Related Reports
Duplicate :  
JDK-6231214 - os::malloc() should fail more gracefully
Relates :  
JDK-6173515 - Improve handling of OutOfMemoryError
Relates :  
JDK-6323105 - Giving reasonable Error Message when running out of Perm-Space
Description

Name: rmT116609			Date: 12/09/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
We have seen  the Out of Memory error using the hot spot JVM.  When this error is detected, only the "Out of Memory" message is print out. Here are the recommended action:

1. When "Out of Memory" is detected, in addition to print out "Out of Memory", please print out the entire stack.  If there is an application issue exists, the stack will help us track the problem down.

2. The "Out of Memory" is triggered in our environment by a memory intensive operation, when this error is encountered, the memory associated with this operation was not collected.  This results in all other less memory intensive operations to fail as well.


JUSTIFICATION :
This "Out of Memory" handling can help application team to identify where the cause of the problem is and to only punish the operation that requires a lot of memory when the free memory is low.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
1. When "Out of Memory" occurs, the stack for the failed allocation is printed.

2. When "Out of Memory" occurs, the memory allocated by the entire thread is clean up.
ACTUAL -
1. When "Out of Memory" occurs, only "Out of Memory" is printed

2. When "Out of Memory" occurs, there are no actions to try to restore the JVM back to health.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
Any allocation program will do. Not application specific.
---------- END SOURCE ----------
(Incident Review ID: 229864) 
======================================================================
Comments
EVALUATION WIll look into this post tiger. It's a known issue that JVM OOM error message does not contain enough information to help debug the problem. One idea being proposed before is to use fatal error handler to report OOM error. Also useful is to tell user what caused the OOM, no space in C heap, no available file descriptor, or too many processes/threads? Also the second request is hard to implement within JVM. JVM is not kernel and threads are not processes. There is no way to safely kill an offending thread. ###@###.### 2003-12-10 ###@###.### 2005-04-29 19:42:33 GMT
10-12-2003