title: Apache Tomcat always runs 3 identical processes
body: <p>I have an Apache Tomcat server in production running an e-Commerce application. I am running Debian Stable using Tomcat 6 and Apache, with mod_jk.</p>
  
  <p>When I start the Tomcat, I always recieve 3 identical processes in memory:</p>
  
  <pre><code> 0:00 /usr/bin/jsvc -user tomcat6 -cp /usr/share/java/commons-daemon.jar:/usr/share/tomcat6/bin/bootstrap.jar -outfile SYSLOG -errfile SYSLOG -pidfile /var/run/tomcat6.pid -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx11000M -Xms11000M -Dsun.lang.ClassLoader.allowArraySyntax=true -verbose:gc -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:ParallelGCThreads=6 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -XX:+AgressiveHeap -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/share/tomcat6/endorsed -Dcatalina.base=/var/lib/tomcat6 -Dcatalina.home=/usr/share/tomcat6 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/home/tomcat-temp -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/var/lib/tomcat6/conf/logging.properties org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap
   0:00 /usr/bin/jsvc -user tomcat6 -cp /usr/share/java/commons-daemon.jar:/usr/share/tomcat6/bin/bootstrap.jar -outfile SYSLOG -errfile SYSLOG -pidfile /var/run/tomcat6.pid -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx11000M -Xms11000M -Dsun.lang.ClassLoader.allowArraySyntax=true -verbose:gc -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:ParallelGCThreads=6 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -XX:+AgressiveHeap -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/share/tomcat6/endorsed -Dcatalina.base=/var/lib/tomcat6 -Dcatalina.home=/usr/share/tomcat6 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/home/tomcat-temp -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/var/lib/tomcat6/conf/logging.properties org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap
  53:18 /usr/bin/jsvc -user tomcat6 -cp /usr/share/java/commons-daemon.jar:/usr/share/tomcat6/bin/bootstrap.jar -outfile SYSLOG -errfile SYSLOG -pidfile /var/run/tomcat6.pid -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx11000M -Xms11000M -Dsun.lang.ClassLoader.allowArraySyntax=true -verbose:gc -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:ParallelGCThreads=6 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -XX:+AgressiveHeap -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/share/tomcat6/endorsed -Dcatalina.base=/var/lib/tomcat6 -Dcatalina.home=/usr/share/tomcat6 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/home/tomcat-temp -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/var/lib/tomcat6/conf/logging.properties org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am scared that this might be a problem. I just tried to kill the first two, as they do not use processor power (0:00 time), but after softly killing the first one, the other processes terminate as well.</p>
  
  <p>We only have 16G in this machine, and memory is short. If I really allocate 11G to each of these 3 processes, this could be part of the troubles I had lately.</p>
  
  <p>My question is this: Is this normal? Googling for an answer, it seems that nobody else has this problem or nobody percieves this as a problem.</p>
  
  <p>Oh, and the pid file names the process which uses up the CPU time.</p>