Java crashing with SIGSEGV while running OpenXchange daemon

[msmeyer]

Hi,

we are running package open-xchange-6.6.0-6 from the Debian repository at http://software.open-xchange.com/OX6/stable/DebianEtch/ (build 6.6.0-6606, 2008-09-03 15:07:54) OpenXchange runs fine most of the time, but sometimes the open-xchange-groupware daemon crashes with the following error:

#
# An unexpected error has been detected by HotSpot Virtual Machine:
#
# SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb75fac7d, pid=3320, tid=2350734224
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (1.5.0_14-b03 mixed mode)
# Problematic frame:
# V [libjvm.so+0x197c7d]
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as /tmp/hs_err_pid3320.log
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
# http://java.sun.com/webapps/bugreport/crash.jsp
#

I added the pid file as an attachment. The regular logs do NOT show any suspicious information, even if set to DEBUG level.

Any ideas why this would happen?

Thanks in advance.


Markus

[Martin Heiland]

Hi,

thanks for reporting, we'll take a look. Does this occur regular or on special actions? Meanwhile - would you mind to upgrade to the latest OX/Java version if there is any available?

Greetings

[msmeyer]

Martin,

it seems that this does not occur on special actions. Infact, this happens at random intervals even if the server is completely idle (e.g. at night when no one is accessing the server). The crash occurs about 1-2x per day. After restarting the daemon, everything works fine again.

[msmeyer]

Hi,
Meanwhile - would you mind to upgrade to the latest OX/Java version if there is any available?

We are about to upgrade to release 6.6-10 which has just been made available in the Debian repository (we will probably update today), but from the changelog it does not seem if this will affect our problem.

[Martin Heiland]

Well, we analyzed the provided segfault and unfortunately there is nothing a application can do if the underlying jvm crashes with a segmentation fault at its native code part. Some advice: You're using a lot of memory optimizations for the jvm. The following parameters are sufficient:

-Xmx512M -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC

Those can be modified at the /opt/open-xchange/etc/groupware/ox-scriptconf.sh file.

For further debugging, this file may be interesting:
/tmp/hsperfdata_open-xchange/3320

Greetings

[msmeyer]

Thanks. We now upgraded to the newest version and also changed the optimization settings as requested. The settings we had were the default from the Debian package.

I will report back if the problem occurs again.

[msmeyer]

Unfortunately, even with the update to build 6.6.0-6610, the problem still seems not to be solved. See the attached logs for the new crash dump.

I do understand that it is not really OpenXchange's fault when the JVM crashes, but I still would like to know why this happens or if anyone else has similar problems with the Debian packages. Note that before, (pre-6.6) we didn't use the Debian packages but the downloads from the website and installed them manually and with this configuration, no crashes happened.

We will update to the newest JVM available in Debian unstable and see if the problem persists.