A Developer.com ISV provides a simple Java application which calls Runtime.getRuntime().exec() and forks new jvms. Each jvm instantiates a fixed number of work threads that eat CPU and stress test jvm and OS. I/O associated with each java.lang.Process is attached to java.io.InputStream/OutputStream reference. On other platforms such as Solaris 2.6, Linux, Win32, HPUX, the jvms appear stable and run continously. However, on Solaris 7/8, the forked jvms exhibit growth (top/prstat) in resident and total memory used, plus rapid growth in associated lwps. The growth continues unabated for several minutes until the jvms throw OutOfMemoryErrors at around 80MBs total memory size each and several hundred threads each.
