Stop policy server generating mini dump files on windows.

Products

• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign-On

Issue/Introduction

Windows Policy server keeps due to out of disk space.

When investigated many mini dump files had been created in the C:\Windows\SysWOW64  directory all having the format name :  hs_err_<pid>.mdmp  and had filled up the C: drive. 

 

 

 

Environment

Windows policy server with active JVM (ie running custom code, or SAML components).

Cause

The hs_err_<pid>.mdmp format indicated this a dump produced by a java vm.

The root cause was a problem in the JVM, causing the crash, but the policy server was auto-restarting, and it was only when the disk became full that the outage occurred. 

 

Resolution

By default the JVM HotSpot JVM 1.7 with the default settings is to produce a mdmp file for each crash. 

For HotSpot Java 1.7 the setting -XX:-CreateMinidumpOnCrash in JVMOptions.txt will disable producting minidumps on a JVM crash

For JVM 1.7 there is no option to change the directory where it will place the mdmps (JRocket, and Java 1.8 have more options).