哪个线程触发了OutOfMemoryException堆转储

Question

I've got a JBoss 4.2.1 application running on a JVM 7 that has triggered heap dumps when it throws OutOfMemoryExceptions . I have the jvm configured with the following switches:

-Xms1498m -Xmx3000m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError

I am trying to read through the heap dumps to figure out exactly what caused my OOME. I see large blocks of memory consumed, but they are somewhat expected. What I am looking for at the moment is the "smoking gun".

I've already opened another SO issue here regarding missing memory in my heap dump, so I'm trying to figure out what the JVM was doing when the OOME occurred.

Is there anything in the heap dump that would indicate which thread triggered the OOME? More specifically what the call that triggered my OOME was doing? I realize and understand that in the case of memory leaks, this might be chasing the wrong trail, but I'm looking to see if I see which thread caused the exception.

Is there anyway to use MAT to see this?

Answer 1

Have you checked the thread overview in MAT?

It won't tell you the thread that triggered the OOME but will give info on retained heap.

Answer 2

We don't really care actually which thread causes the OOME as it would not prove anything, think about a thread that does a simple task with no leak, if the heap is already nearly full and this thread creates even a small Object it could cause the OOME without being the root cause of the memory leak.

Regarding your actual question I don't believe that you can know which Thread caused the OOME from a heap dump, the only way is to check your console or your log file as the JVM prints the stack trace into the standard output on OOME .