JVM crash with JCo 2.1.6 on AIX 5.3

After integrating JCo in an existing web application, we experience infrequent JVM crashes. We suspect that the error is caused by the native JCo libaries.

Analysis so far:

- Every Javacore dump contains the following lines:

SIGSEGV received at 0xd12482cc in /usr/WebSphere/AppServer/java/jre/bin/classic/libjvm.a. Processing terminated.

J2RE 1.4.2 IBM AIX build ca142ifx-20051115 (SR3 + 94164 + 97403 + 97482)

- The current thread in each core dump is in a different java class.

- Every Javacore contains a thread with the native JCo call:

"1922390637::609738/NORDKredit" (TID:0x302E0E28, sys_thread_t:0x69ECB620, state:R, native ID:0x47B5) prio=5

at com.sap.mw.jco.rfc.MiddlewareRFC$Client.nativeExecute(Native Method)

- The garbage collector runs in verbose mode and shows 50-70% free memory.

Environment:

IBM Websphere 6.2

IBM JDK 1.4.2

JCo 2.1.6

AIX 5.3

Has anybody experienced a similar problem? Does JCo 2.1.7 or other patches fix this issue?