Work queue overflow during re-mark?

[Justin Ellison]

Hello all,

I'm running 1.4.2_17 on Solaris 9 Sparc.

When I was running 1.4.2_12 on the same system, I was experiencing bug
6558100.  I was able to get a fix backported to 1.4.2, and the fix was
released in 1.4.2_17.

The bug where the VM crashed is certainly resolved, but occasionally I
still get *a lot* of these lines printed to stdout:
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM warning: Work queue overflow during re-mark

By a lot, I mean 144,347 times since the VM was started 6 days ago.

The usage scenario is a website running jsps that make heavy use of
caching in heap.  The log entries seem to follow cases where the
caches are being cleared.  This makes sense, as a cache full of
objects that all of a sudden become available for GC might fill a
fixed queue.

My question is twofold - what is the impact of this, and is there any
workaround for it?  I'm willing to sacrifice a little heap to increase
that array size if need be.  Also, do those objects get GC'd next time
around, or do they stick around?

Justin