Spawned Processes and Memory

Question

Hi Guys,
Does the JVM limit the amount of memory that a process uses when spawning using Runtime.exec()
Basically we are trying to run the microsoft linker from Java (via Maven) and it keeps erroring with 'out of memory' this seems to happen when the process uses around 275MB of RAM.
Are processes spawned by Java limited to the amount of memory allocated to the JVM via -Xmx ?
Any insight on this matter would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Check the source code of the function
Java_java_lang_Win32Process_create
in j2se\src\windows\native\java\lang\Win32Process_md.c (you can get such
source code downloading the SCSL Source code.
The relevant information is posted below.
    si.dwFlags = STARTF_USESTDHANDLES;
    processFlag = CREATE_NO_WINDOW;
    ret = CreateProcess(0,                /* executable name */
                        cmd,              /* command line */
                        0,                /* process security attribute */
                        0,                /* thread security attribute */
                        TRUE,             /* inherits system handles */
                        processFlag,      /* selected based on exe type */
                        envcmd,           /* environment block */
                        cwd,              /* change to the new current directory */
                        &si,              /* (in)  startup information */
                        &pi);             /* (out) process information */It simply does not adjust memory size, or do something mysterious. It simply creates the process, and redirects the input , output and error streams.
You really must get more memory (or adjust the size of your Windows swap file)...
You can try lowering (not raising) the -Xmx limit of your Java program to make more room for the "link" process.