Hi, This story has a long tail. It started with: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-7038914 Some stress tests triggered OOME in ReferenceHandler thread which would die. The first attempt at fixing this was the following discussion: https://www.mail-archive.com/core-libs-dev%40openjdk.java.net/msg16250.html Which resulted in patch: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8/jdk/rev/0b8dab7fec54 This assumed that ReferenceHandler thread doing Object.wait() could be interrupted (by stress test - normal application don't do that) and failed to allocate InterruptedException object. A jtreg test was designed which triggered that situation and a fix would catch OOME and ignore it. But the stress tests (the same or some other, I don't know) apparently were not entirely happy with this fix. The following discussion describes this: https://www.mail-archive.com/core-libs-dev%40openjdk.java.net/msg23596.html The other "unprotected" point at which OOME could be thrown and was later confirmed by debugging is (r instanceof Cleaner) test. The assumption was that it could trigger Cleaner class loading at 1st execution which would cause OOME to be thrown. The fix that finally silenced stress tests was the following: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk9/dev/jdk/rev/d04102f69d46 This part of code (the j.l.r.Reference class and its members) has undergone further changes afterwards for fixing another bug: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-6857566 With following patch: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk9/jdk9/jdk/rev/9934d34ed3c0 But this did not change the code paths - just factored-out the content of the loop into a separate method that could be used from outside. All well until kim.barrett@oracle.com noticed that the 2nd fix introduced a potentially illegal situation. There is a j.l.r.Reference.Lock inner class and a singleton object assigned to static field in j.l.Reference class with the following notice: /* Object used to synchronize with the garbage collector. The collector * must acquire this lock at the beginning of each collection cycle. It is * therefore critical that any code holding this lock complete as quickly * as possible, allocate no new objects, and avoid calling user code. */ static private class Lock { } private static Lock lock = new Lock(); The conflicting part is "allocate no new objects". Catching OOME inside a synchronized block holding this lock implies that new objects could be allocated. I have a feeling that the 2nd fix prevented that by pre-loading the Cleaner class at Reference class initialization time. But because it was hard to reproduce the situation where OOME was thrown from (r instanceof Cleaner) check, we nevertheless handled this hypothetical situation. Perhaps it would be better that we didn't and just see if OOME returned after just adding the pre-loading of Cleaner class... So here we are, at an attempt to clean this up: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8055232 We can move (r instanceof Cleaner) check outside of synchronized block to where it was before the 2nd fix and wait what stress tests will show. Another possibility is to move the instanceof check outside of synchronized block, but handle the hypothetical OOME by re-linking the unlinked reference back into the pending chain: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~plevart/jdk9-dev/ReferenceHandlerExceptions/webr... What would you suggest? Regards, Peter