Infrastructure Software

I am chasing a process size growth problem in 3rd party App Server. The process is a 1.1.7 JRE which I'm sure exits into C/C++ routines via JNI for database and other internal sub-system tasks. The JRE process grows from 15MB to 230 MB during a single day of use.

By using the "pmap" tool (/usr/proc/bin), I can see that 190MB of the process space consists of thousands of 8K page allocations of "anonymous memory" (anon). These exist between the heap for the process and the last shared library loaded. Only a handful of these 8K pages of "anon" exist in the process space when the JRE process first starts. They seem to be added incrementally while the process size grows simultaneously. The process heap (according to pmap) itself does manage to grow from 4MB to 20MB, but doesn't seem to account for this large of a process size. The Java VM's report of its own heap size never shows a heap greater than 16MB.

Can anyone explain what types of activities cause "anon" memory to be allocated?

Is the Java VM's heap a part of the process "heap" or separate (possibly a part of this "anon" memory)?

How can I track down the cause of this "anon" memory allocation, it appears to be a memory leak in this App Server. I may have more luck with their technical support if I can point them in the right direction.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Mark