Re: Sudden JVM crashes - a Postgres driver problem?

pgsql-jdbc-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org wrote:

>> I've also checked a bunch of mailing-lists and it seems there are
>> some outstanding bugs in hotspot, that may trigger the crash. Does
>> anybody have more information or a workaround for this?

We're running ColdFusion MX 6.1 on a couple of Debian servers and a
couple of months ago we suddenly experienced massive stability problems
after the machines had run smoothely for several weeks. I don't know why
these problems just surfaced all of a sudden, but as far as I
understand, they were probably due a problem in Sun's JVM HotSpot
optimizer (see
http://www.talkingtree.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=day&day=21&month=05&year=
2004 ). In the end we had to restart the application server about once a
day which was not at all a comfortable workaround.

After trying several other hacks, one of them involving deactivation of
the HotSpot optimizer altogether and thus fullback to interpreter-mode,
I chose to ditch Sun's JVM in favour of BEA's JRockit VM; you may
download the VM free at
http://commerce.bea.com/products/weblogicjrockit/accept_terms142.jsp.
Documentation can be found here:
http://e-docs.bea.com/wljrockit/docs142/index.html.

Exchanging JVMs was done in a couple of minutes and we haven't had one
single JVM crash ever since. You may see comparable results by simply
upgrading your JVM or trying IBM's, though, so please try what suits you
best. I hope you'll be able to resolve your issue!

Kind regards

Markus