number of running jvm's in tomcat (newbie Q)

[David Lennartsson <f9...@dd.chalmers.se>]

Hi all,

I'm new to tomcat and to the tomcat mailing list, so this may be realy
easy. However I couldn't find any specific information on the subject in
the archives.

I'm running a debian linux server with tomcat installed using IBM's
JRE2-13. However as I check running processes I often get an entry
from 'ps -aux' showing a zombie : [java <defunct>]. The process then
quickly disappears and soon appear again at a different PID.

At the same time another 11 IBMJava processes already are running and this
happens when there are no requests to the server.

Is this normal? What may be wrong? How/Where can i determine how many java
processes i want to run simultaneous? The maximum connection
parameter doesn't seem to change the amount running. (pool=false).

Thanks!

	/david