humm... that's good information In 8 years working with appservers never had this kind of problem so I never tryied for real. My first impression was that the kill -3 signal was send to O.S but as I just read in article looks like this will be only a signal send to JVM wich in consequence takes the thread dump. I would appreciate more links and information on this. Where did you find out about this? . I will also, of course, do some research on this subject.