<b>SPEC</b> JVM Client98 Help Common Problems

The benchmarks require at least 20MB of heap memory. On different systems they may require more heap, and will usually run faster with more heap. Many java interpreters have a property or command line flag to control the heap size. E.g.

    appletviewer -J-mx32m http://server/jvm98/SpecApplet.html
   

    Security Exception: class from local disk trying to access url:file:/home/jvm98/props/user

You're trying to run the applet from a local disk (file:/) and Netscape's security manager refuses to allow the applet to read files from your disk. First you should note that the run rules require for reportable results that you run from a web server instead of from a local disk. If you do this, then Netscape's security manager will not prevent the applet from reading the necessary configuration files from the applet host.

However, you may want to run from the local disk for test purposes, not for public reporting of results. In this case you may use another web browser that allows you finer control of your security preferences, e.g. appletviewer from the Java Development Kit, Microsoft Internet Explorer, or HotJava. In this case you may need to set properties or answer dialog boxes giving authorization for the applet to read from your disk. See Advanced Topics for more information.


You need Netscape Communicator 4.05 or later. Also note that the JVM's in Communicator 4.05 for different platforms may be different. Open the Java Console and read the version of Java. Communicator versions based on 1.1.2 instead of 1.1.5 may have incomplete JVM implementations. Communicator versions 4.02 and 4.04 with JVM's based on 1.1.2 will run most of the benchmarks but _227_mtrt, the multi-threaded ray tracer, may not complete.


   ======= _201_compress Finished in 0.010 secs 
    

You need a patch:

The JIT Update for JDKTM 1.1.6 Software, Early Access 1 (or later) whose URL as of this writing is: http://developer.javasoft.com/developer/earlyAccess/jit/


Were you running in application mode earlier? If so, you may have set your CLASSPATH to load from local disk when possible instead of from the web server. Check and reset your CLASSPATH, or log out and log back in.


Have you been studying the benchmarks using an Integrated Development Environment? Such a tool is very useful in navigating the source code and examining relationships among classes. However if you're not careful it may recompile the source code which could make a benchmark run faster or slower. The run rules prohibit modifying the class files.

Also, if there is a bug in the IDE's compiler, it could produce incorrect code causing the JVM class loader to reject the invalid class file, or producing incorrect results.

The _999_checkit program can be used to detect recompiled class files or installations that have been otherwise corrupted. If that is the case you should remove the benchmark suite and reinstall.


Yes it does. Development of the suite began under the 1.0.2 API and concluded under the 1.1 API. We expect that later releases will be based entirely on 1.1.


Unfortunately there are three areas in the benchmarks where the portability features available in the Java platform have not been used as they should be:

  1. In some places there are dependencies on the ASCII character set. Unicode should be used throughout.
  2. In some places a particular line termination character (e.g. '\n' for UNIX) is hard coded. Some systems handle multiple line termination sequences, but this will cause spurious errors on other systems. Character.LINE_SEPARATOR should be used instead.
  3. In some places a particular directory separator character (e.g. '/' for UNIX) is hard coded. In contexts where a URL is specified, the '/' character is correct for all systems as a component separator. However in contexts where it may be a file rather than a URL, then File.separator should be used instead.

These limitations may be addressed in a future revision to the suite that would also remove deprecated API 1.0.2 methods.


You need a web browser that can print applets, e.g. Netscape Communicator 4.05, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01, or Sun HotJava 1.02. If you're using an older browser, turn off Java and the SPEC ratio bar chart will appear as GIF graphs. It's not quite as nice as the Java applet graph, and the memory utilization chart does not appear, but you can view and print it in almost any browser.


Wherever you move results pages you need to also have copies of the GIF images and Java class files used by the pages. Normally (if you have not overridden the default location when you generated the reporting page) the required files are:


Did this not address your problem? Then see Technical Support.