Garbage Collection Resources

If you are confronted with a JVM crash in PROD, you might want first to read some documents on GC.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/gc-tuning-6-140523.html for Java 6, very well explained conceptually.

http://www.fasterj.com/articles/oraclecollectors1.shtml brillant lookup of the main flags available, and possible combination of GC for yound and old generation (Java 7)

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/vmoptions-jsp-140102.html list of all JDK 7 options.

To test the options, you can run InfiniteLoop.java :

public class InfiniteLoop {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        for (;;) {Thread.sleep(1000);}
    }
}

and run jconsole....in the "threads" tab you have a nice summary of the Eden Space, Survivor Space, Old Gen.

you can also run jinfo:

jinfo -flag UseParallelGC 3797
jinfo -flag MinHeapFreeRatio 3797
jinfo -flag UseSerialGC 3797

where 3797 is the process PID.

Attempts to change GC strategy runtime :

jinfo -flag +UseSerialGC 3797

will miserably fail:

Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Command failed in target VM
 at sun.tools.attach.BsdVirtualMachine.execute(BsdVirtualMachine.java:208)
 at sun.tools.attach.HotSpotVirtualMachine.executeCommand(HotSpotVirtualMachine.java:217)
 at sun.tools.attach.HotSpotVirtualMachine.setFlag(HotSpotVirtualMachine.java:190)
 at sun.tools.jinfo.JInfo.flag(JInfo.java:129)
 at sun.tools.jinfo.JInfo.main(JInfo.java:76)

On a different topic, read also:

1 - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/crashes-137240.html this document about troubleshooting system crashes

2 - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/hotspotfaq-138619.html this interesting FAQ list

3 - this document http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/jdk50-ts-guide-149808.pdf (a bit outdated) about jmap, jinfo, jstack etc

4 - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/index-137495.html this one repeats more or less - with more details - the info in the above document n. 3

Priceless are these commands:

jmap -heap 3843
jmap -histo 3843
jmap -permstat 3843
jmap -dump:file=dump.map 3843
jhat -port 7401 dump.map (at this point open your browser at localhost:7401)

jstat -gc 3843
jstat -printcompilation 3843

jstat -gcutil 3843 250 7