> Have you ever had to explain to someone that a java out of memory error had nothing do with the fact that linux is using otherwise idle memory to buffer i/o a

> Have you ever had to explain to someone that a java out of memory error had nothing do with the fact that linux is using otherwise idle memory to buffer i/o and that they're misreading top output? That the actual issue is their object management and just increasing the JVM's heap size is at best a bandaid? I've not seen a professional developer be confused about Linux using otherwise idle memory to buffer, no. I have seen that with sysadmins who mostly look after Windows boxes and were somewhat unfairly dropped in at the deep end. I've seen JVM heap OOM errors be caused by both object management issues and applications that would legitimately benefit from larger heap sizes. Many, many times. I think I'd fall off my seat if I saw a sysadmin use JMX to find an issue. I did see a security guy (so not really a sysadmin, but he was doing a related job) use strace once. He was remarkable enough to have his own Wikipedia page.