What can cause hs_err_pid file not to be created on crash?

Question

I need to investigate crashes of a Java client application. It's s Swing application, running in Java Web Start environement on Java SE 6 Update 23 on Windows. Unfortunately for some crash cases the hs_err_pid file was not created. It wasn't on the desktop, so I've searched for it on PC and did not find it(there was an old hs_err_pid file on the desktop, for the same application, so it's reasonable to assume the new one should have been created there too). There is no exception in the log in the end, as it usually happens when JVM crashes on Java exception, so it looks like a crash that should result on creation of hs_err_pid file.

Do I need to configure something to make it work? Can the configuration of Dr. Watson affect the creation of hs_err_pid file?

Thanks

We configured Dr' Watson and analyzed the core dump file, which was created after the app crashed again. The error I saw was "Access violation". From the stack trace I was able to see that the crash is caused by exception in a native code of a third party we use. This was enough to delegate the issue to them.

Bottom line:
1. Some Java crashes are not handled as expected by JVM so that hs_err_pid file is not created.
2. Configuring OS to create a core dump can help in those cases, as the crash that is not handled by JVM will be handled by the OS. You'll get less information in this case, still it can be helpful.

Answer 1

If the crash occurs as the result of a native stack overflow (typically resulting in a SIGSEGV as the application tries to read/write a stack guard page), no hs_err_pid file is generated on many platforms (e.g., Linux) since the process which creates the file cannot complete if you are out of stack space.