Idle GBJ Broker can hold up garbage collection
The GBJ broker runs in transactionless mode, and it only aborts when it
receives a SIGABORT from the stone. In an idle system, this may be infrequent.
In GemStone/S 6.1 and later, epoch, markForCollection, and other garbage
collection processes cannot be started until the voting phase of a previous
garbage collection is complete. The voting phase of garbage collection
does not complete until each session, including the GBJ Broker, has voted,
which occurs at commit/abort.
Workaround
Shut down and restart the GBJ Broker; or commit in a loop until the backlog
is high enough that the stone sends a SIGABORT to the GBJ Broker.
The fix that is included in the 2.1.1 release is available as a filein
from GemStone Technical Support.
Last updated: 3/19/04