JMS persistent store getting too big

[kariem]

Hi,

I think it is rather a configuration issue; please point me to the right place to ask this question, if it is not in the correct place here.

The default configuration for JBoss 4.0.1sp1 uses HSQLDB as persistence for the JMS destinations. After running our application for about 8 months we encountered a strange issue two weeks ago:

A bug in an application caused the DB files (localDB.data) to rise to more than 1 GB within several minutes. The bug was resolved but JBoss could not be restarted, only after cleaning tmp/work/undeploy directories and the message store.

I know that HSQLDB is not recommended for production, although I read only good things about the new release. I do not think, using a different DB resolves problems like this. Could you tell me how to change the following parameters:

• Set the queue size to a maximum (no. of messages, total size ...)
  
• Remove old messages automatically (timeout) without changes on the JMS clients
  
• Use the DEFRAG function from HSQLDB
  
  In the examples configurations I could not find any hints on these configuration settings.
  
  I found some information in the following posts, for JBoss 3.x
  
  • http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=47993
    
  • http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=56843
    
    I found some settings for the message cache (service=PersistenceManager) in the following post, which are not used or documented in the example configuration files, but I don't know how I can use them.
    http://www.jboss.com/?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=69324
    
    • MinimumHard
      
    • MaximumHard
      
      Could you please help me on this or point me to a place where I find more information?
      
      Thank you,
      Kariem

[genman]

JBoss has an inherit problem where if you restart the server with too many messages in the DB (does not matter which one) it won't come up. (You get out of memory errors.) There was a patch for this (lazy-loading queues) but had some flaws.

* Set the queue size to a maximum (no. of messages, total size ...)

Take a look at the JMX console for the queues. (You can limit by number, but not by size)

* Remove old messages automatically (timeout) without changes on the JMS clients

You can add a message interceptor. Download the source from CVS. There is a tracing interceptor you can adopt to set the expiration header.

* Use the DEFRAG function from HSQLDB

1.8, at least the one bundled with JBoss 4.0.3 automatically defrags. You can increase the size to 8GB as well.

[kariem]

Sorry for the late reply. Thank you very much for the great answers. Really helpful!

Kariem