Memory Accounting, JDKs [was: Re: [Techtalk] Java on Linux]

[Nicole Zimmerman]

> Basically what this says is you've got around 180MB swapped out to
> disk, around 11MB free (but you knew that) and about 50MB in the
> buffer cache (used to cache blocks from disk).  The rest of the
> numbers basically say your system is hardly loaded at all, which means
> the stuff in swap isn't that important.

Thanks for the rundown. :o)

> I'm going to have to say your Java really is using a big pile of
> memory.  I had a similar problem with Python (another garbage
> collecting language).  The Python script (a Linux installation
> program) would run even a 128MB RAM box out of memory, the OOM killer
> would kill it, and bam, end of install.  The only solution was to add
> swap space halfway through the install.

Yeah, I know it's using a lot of memory. I wish it was easier to track
down WHY though. 

> It'd be interesting to see what would happen without swap.  Perhaps
> Java would be prodded into garbage collecting better?  On the other
> hand, they might just die horribly.  Just comment out the swap line in
> /etc/fstab (or type swapoff -a before you start your programs).

I am afraid to ;o)

I will try this later after I'm done working on other things and can close
out (kill, whatever) all of the other apps.

-nicole