About Sun JVM Bug 4705373

Question

For the detail description of this bug, please refer to http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4705373
I made a test on Bug 4705373 on my laptop, the test environment is:
RAM: 1.25GB
OS: Windows XP SP1
JAVA: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_08-b03, mixed mode)
The size of test2.zip: 1.32GB
Test program:
public class LargeZipFile {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          try {
               System.out.println("totoal memory: " + Runtime.getRuntime().totalMemory());
               System.out.println("free memory: " + Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory());
               System.out.println(args[0] + ", size is " + new java.io.File(args[0]).length() + " bytes");
               new java.util.zip.ZipFile(args[0]);
               System.out.println("success");
          } catch (Throwable t) {
               t.printStackTrace();
Test Result:
E:\Tools>java -Xms1250m -Xmx1250m LargeZipFile test2.zip
totoal memory: 1300692992
free memory: 1300560136
test2.zip, size is 1425952261 bytes
success
I didnot get the OutOfMemoryError.
Questions:
1. Is this bug only related with Linux system (Or certain kernel version)?
2. How to reproduce this bug on Windows environment?
3. Can anybody give a more detailed explaination of the cause of the bug?
Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

The suggested SUN workaround is simply to increase your PermSize. The default recommended size for NW04 is 192MB. If you get OOM in the Perm space then that suggests you might be hitting this bug (or your Perm space is just to small...). You should first simply increase the PermSize to something larger such as 256MB which is the suggested size for 7.0 (2004S) kernels anyway. But remember that Perm counts in your Heap so make sure you don't get things too big if you are on 32-bit OS.
Based on my reading of the bug report it is not guaranteed that you would experience this bug, though certainly it seems possible. There are no published SAP Notes regarding this SUN bug to my knowledge.
Nick