It seems to be impossible to use jmap -permstat <java> <core> (1.4.2_13) on gcore of approx 2gb because it frequently fails with:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: requested 8192 bytes for jbyte in /export1/jdk142-update/ws/f
cs/hotspot/src/share/vm/prims/jni.cpp. Out of swap space?

Using a lot of gcore files (more than 20) collected from a running weblogic server (Sol8 Sun-Fire-480R) only sometimes (4 times on gcore files collected when GC usage/activity was low) it was possible to extract permstat info. When it was successfull process size of jmap was something like 2.6g or 3g. When unsuccessfull jmap process grows until the limit and then fails

LD_PRELOAD=SA/interpose/SunOS_sun4u/interpose.so `dirname $0`/../j2sdk1.4.2_13/bin/jmap -J-Xmx1g -J-XX:MaxPermSize=256m -permstat executable corefile

   PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/LWPID
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M cpu7 0 10 0:20:24 10% jmap/1
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M sleep 29 10 0:01:12 1.2% jmap/2
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M sleep 59 0 0:00:02 0.0% jmap/8
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M sleep 59 10 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/7
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/6
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/5
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M sleep 51 2 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/4
 24227 claudiom 3782M 3505M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/3
Total: 1 processes, 8 lwps, load averages: 5.47, 6.09, 5.52
   PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/LWPID
Total: 0 processes, 0 lwps, load averages: 5.43, 6.07, 5.52

It is not possible to use the 64bit as workaround because of the error:

LD_PRELOAD_64=SA/interpose/SunOS_sun4u/interpose64.so `dirname $0`/../j2sdk1.4.2_13/bin/sparcv9/jmap -J-d64 -J-Xmx1g -J-XX:MaxPermSize=256m -permstat executable corefile

Attaching to core corefile from executable executable, please wait...
Error attaching to core file: debuggee is 32 bit, use 32 bit java for debugger

Running with +PrintGCDetails and +PrintGCTimeStamps in additional .hotspotrc I can see it does not use all the java heap
It works fine until "computing liveness..........."
On a Sun-Fire-880 with 32gb it takes half an hour to run, probably because increases allocated memory by a segment of 4m (used prstat -L -p pid)


1408.771: [GC 1408.771: [DefNew: 21436K->639K(21888K), 0.0298402 secs] 175371K->155920K(201664K), 0.0299709 secs]
1410.698: [GC 1410.698: [DefNew: 21887K->614K(21888K), 0.0129789 secs] 177168K->156534K(201664K), 0.0130856 secs]
...
2066.234: [GC 2066.234: [DefNew: 67972K->439K(69760K), 0.0098242 secs] 469207K->401674K(644104K), 0.0099315 secs]
2073.456: [GC 2073.456: [DefNew: 68087K->939K(69760K), 0.0108945 secs] 469322K->402174K(644104K), 0.0109931 secs]
2078.671: [GC 2078.671: [DefNew: 68587K->1325K(69760K), 0.0105477 secs] 469822K->402559K(644104K), 0.0106818 secs]
...
2595.050: [GC 2595.051: [DefNew: 79159K->1785K(80000K), 0.0203313 secs] 647945K->571185K(738536K), 0.0204670 secs]
2600.518: [GC 2600.518: [DefNew: 79417K->1872K(80000K), 0.0361514 secs] 648817K->572032K(738536K), 0.0362653 secs]
2605.197: [GC 2605.197: [DefNew: 79504K->1457K(80000K), 0.0157982 secs] 649664K->572361K(738536K), 0.0160160 secs]

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: requested 8192 bytes for jbyte in /export1/jdk142-update/ws/fcs/hotspot/src/share/vm/prims/jni.cpp. Out of swap space?


Total: 1 processes, 8 lwps, load averages: 9.31, 10.41, 10.56
   PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/LWPID
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M run 0 10 0:25:45 8.9% jmap/1
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M sleep 29 10 0:01:05 0.0% jmap/2
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M sleep 59 0 0:00:03 0.0% jmap/8
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M sleep 59 10 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/7
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/6
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/5
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M sleep 51 2 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/4
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3208M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/3
Total: 1 processes, 8 lwps, load averages: 9.23, 10.38, 10.55
   PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/LWPID
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M run 0 10 0:25:49 8.8% jmap/1
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M sleep 29 10 0:01:05 0.0% jmap/2
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M sleep 59 0 0:00:03 0.0% jmap/8
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M sleep 59 10 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/7
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/6
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/5
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M sleep 51 2 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/4
 21079 claudiom 3487M 3192M sleep 59 0 0:00:00 0.0% jmap/3
Total: 1 processes, 8 lwps, load averages: 9.16, 10.34, 10.54
   PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/LWPID
Total: 0 processes, 0 lwps, load averages: 9.10, 10.31, 10.53
   PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/LWPID
Total: 0 processes, 0 lwps, load averages: 9.09, 10.29, 10.52

It seems that jmap is running in one thread and eating all the available address space.
Often it requests too much memory, because of object distribution in heap, and it fails at approx 3.5gb of process size


LivenessAnalysis: WARNING: sun.jvm.hotspot.utilities.AssertionFailure: FIXME: add derived pointer table during traversal
LivenessAnalysis: WARNING: sun.jvm.hotspot.utilities.AssertionFailure: FIXME: add derived pointer table during traversal
........%


(pmap collected a few secs before)

21079: .../j2sdk1.4.2_13/bin/jmap -J-Xmx1g -J-XX:
 Address Kbytes RSS Anon Locked Mode Mapped File
00010000 56 40 - - r-x-- jmap
0002C000 16 16 8 - rwx-- jmap
00030000 3904 3824 2232 - rwx-- [ heap ]
00400000 2600960 2562176 2502656 - rwx-- [ heap ]
...
B0800000 4096 4096 4096 - rwx-- [ anon ]
B0C00000 4096 4096 4096 - rwx-- [ anon ]
B1000000 4096 4096 4096 - rwx-- [ anon ]
B1400000 12288 12288 12288 - rwx-- [ anon ]
B2000000 4096 4096 4096 - rwx-- [ anon ]
...
FB538000 8 8 8 - rwx-- [ anon ]
FB53A000 8 8 8 - rwx-- [ anon ]
FB53C000 8 8 8 - rwx-- [ anon ]
FB53E000 8 8 8 - rwx-- [ anon ]
FB540000 8 8 8 - rwx-- [ anon ]
FB542000 24 24 24 - rwx-- [ anon ]
....
FFBF0000 64 64 56 - rw--- [ stack ]
-------- ------- ------- ------- -------
total Kb 3427520 3255144 3183232 -


It is not safe to ask customers to run on production servers the jmap -permstat <pid> due other known bugs (6306997) which can destroy debugee process