How could I check to see if the web server is experiencing the effects of a memory leak?
Restart your server. Look at the process “size” using either “top” or “ps”. The top command gives the added advantage of having a threads column (THR) which will show you the number of active threads. The number of threads should increase based upon the number of simultaneous requests Now hit the server with a load of say 50 concurrent users for X times and for Y minutes. You should see the process size increase in top. Let the server idle for 5 minutes to let garbage collection do its cleanup. Hit the server with the same load again. You should NOT see a dramatic increase in size as you did in the beginning. THere should not be a huge increase in size but a small increase. Let the server idle again for 5 minutes. Hit the server again but with a lower load than the original- say- half the size. This time, you should not see any increase in the size. Repeat the test over and over. If there is a memory leak, then the size will consistently grow. If so, look at the system config, check SW
