I've looked through couple of articles here such as:
java stack dump on windows
Thread dump programmatically /JDI (Java Debugger Interface)
But didnt catch the exact answer.
The problem:
There is a Java5 Application on Windows that's runs as a service (so we dont have a console where we are able to use Ctrl+Break for Dumping).
And sometimes Application hangs and we need a thread dump.
We've tried "jstack" but it doesnt work in our env (we found out that its Java6 only compatible).
So we made a C++ app that calls thread dump via .dll call method attaching to the Java app process, and because of this it needs Local Admin rights, that is not so good.
So we'd like other options that works without admin rights and works with Java 5 without lots of rework of existing code.
Method with Printing in LOOP thread dumps (Thread.getAllStackTraces()) is not an option because we need to refactor lots of applications in order to make it work.
So that just an util that works from "outside" of applications would be a best option.
Thanks in advance!
One option is to dump all the information using jmap, and then analyzing it using other tool.
jmap -dump:format=b,file=<filename>.hprof <jvm_pid>
I am not sure, buy I think it will work on Java 5.
References:
HPjmeter-like graphical tool to view -agentlib:hprof profiling output
You can attach to the process with JConsole to detect deadlocks and get stack traces of the threads. For more information, see here: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/jconsole.html
Related
In Java profiling, it seems like all (free) roads nowadays lead to the VisualVM profiler included with JDK6. It looks like a fine program, and everyone touts how you can "attach it to a running process" as a major feature. The problem is, that seems to be the only way to use it on a local process. I want to be able to start my program in the profiler, and track its entire execution.
I have tried using the -Xrunjdwp option described in how to profile application startup with visualvm, but between the two transport methods (shared memory and server), neither is useful for me. VisualVM doesn't seem to have any integration with the former, and VisualVM refuses to connect to localhost or 127.0.0.1, so the latter is no good either. I also tried inserting a simple read of System.in into my program to insert a pause in execution, but in that case VisualVM blocks until the read completes, and doesn't allow you to start profiling until after execution is under way. I have also tried looking into the Eclipse plugin but the website is full of dead links and the launcher just crashes with a NullPointerException when I try to use it (this may no longer be accurate).
Coming from C, this doesn't seem like a particularly difficult task to me. Am I just missing something or is this really an impossible request? I'm open to any kinds of suggestions, including using a different (also free) profiler, and I'm not averse to the command line.
Consider using HPROF and opening the data file with a tool like HPjmeter - or just reading the resulting text file in your favorite editor.
Command used: javac -J-agentlib:hprof=heap=sites Hello.java
SITES BEGIN (ordered by live bytes) Fri Oct 22 11:52:24 2004
percent live alloc'ed stack class rank self accum bytes objs bytes objs trace name
1 44.73% 44.73% 1161280 14516 1161280 14516 302032 java.util.zip.ZipEntry
2 8.95% 53.67% 232256 14516 232256 14516 302033 com.sun.tools.javac.util.List
3 5.06% 58.74% 131504 2 131504 2 301029 com.sun.tools.javac.util.Name[]
4 5.05% 63.79% 131088 1 131088 1 301030 byte[]
5 5.05% 68.84% 131072 1 131072 1 301710 byte[]
HPROF is capable of presenting CPU usage, heap allocation statistics,
and monitor contention profiles. In addition, it can also report
complete heap dumps and states of all the monitors and threads in the
Java virtual machine.
The best way to solve this problem without modifying your application, is to not use VisualVM at all. As far as other free options are concerned, you could use either Eclipse TPTP or the Netbeans profiler, or whatever comes with your IDE.
If you can modify your application, to suspend it's state while you setup the profiler in VisualVM, it is quite possible to do so, using the VisualVM Eclipse plugin. I'm not sure why you are getting the NullPointerException, since it appears to work on my workstation. You'll need to configure the plugin by providing the path to the jvisualvm binary and the path of the JDK; this is done by visiting the VisualVM configuration dialog at Windows -> Preferences -> Run/Debug - > Launching -> VisualVM Configuration (as shown in the below screenshot).
You'll also need to configure your application to start with the VisualVM launcher, instead of the default JDT launcher.
All application launches from Eclipse, will now result in VisualVM tracking the new local JVM automatically, provided that VisualVM is already running. If you do not have VisualVM running, then the plugin will launch VisualVM, but it will also continue running the application.
Inferring from the previous sentence, it is evident that having the application halt in the main() method before performing any processing is quite useful. But, that is not the main reason for suspending the application. Apparently, VisualVM or its Eclipse plugin does not allow for automatically starting the CPU or memory profilers. This would mean that these profilers would have to be started manually, thereby necessitating the need to suspend the application.
Additionally, it is worth noting that adding the flags: -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=y to the JVM startup will not help you in the case of VisualVM, to suspend the application and setup up the profilers. The flags are meant to help you in the case of profilers that can actually connect to the open port of the JVM, using the JDWP protocol. VisualVM does not use this protocol and therefore you would have to connect to the application using JDB or a remote debugger; but that would not resolve the problem associated with profiler configuration, as VisualVM (at least as of Java 6 update 26) does not allow you to configure the profilers on a suspended process as it simply does not display the Profiler tab.
This is now possible with the startup profiler plugin to VisualVM.
The advice with -Xrunjdwp is incorrect. It just enables debugger and with suspend=y it waits for debugger to attach. Since VisualVM is not debugger, it does not help you. However inserting System.in or Thread.sleep() will pause the startup and allows VisualVM to attach to your application. Be sure to read Profiling with VisualVM 1 and Profiling with VisualVM 2 to better understand profiler settings. Note also that instead of profiling, you can use 'Sampler' tab in VisualVM, which is more suitable for profiling entire java program execution. As other mentioned you can also use NetBeans Profiler, which directly support profiling of the application startup.
I am trying to debug a program running on a remote solaris machine.
I wanted to know path taken by the program during the execution just like stake trace
like
Class A.method1 called method2 in class B
Class B.method2 called method3 in class C
..
...
Control returned from method2 in class B to
method1 in Class A etc
We cannot run the program from eclipse since the environment cannot be reproduced since it is a large enterprise level system having many upstream and downstream systems.
I suspect somewhere in the program there is an exception being thrown and that is not handled properly like a empty catch block/not logging or rethrowing the exception.
What is the best way to debug such programs. Please help me with your solutions.
You can use Eclipse to debug remote applications, all you need to do is add a few startup parameters: http://eclipse.dzone.com/articles/how-debug-remote-java-applicat
You can debug remotely with eclipse, see this
If you want to trace the execution of your Java code you can use a tool called InTrace.
InTrace supports outputting the trace from a Java program to disk or over the network to the InTrace UI. This should be ideal for debugging your Java program on a remote solaris machine.
NOTE: InTrace is a free and open source tool which I have written.
Since, your remote machine runs under Solaris you could use DTrace to dynamically add probes to your running JVMs and the complete system.
You could remote debug, which Eclipse supports, but may not be permitted by the system admin. The only other thing I can think of is lots and lots of logging
in such cases I have used Btrace https://dzone.com/articles/introduction-btrace , it doesn't require you to setup a remote debugger, nor to have the source code of your Java application.
Another way is to run jdb https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/tools/windows/jdb.html and attach to the process - but you must enable the process JVM to use jdwp -agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_shmem,server=y,suspend=n
In general I agree that the JDK is lacking a professional built-in tracing/debugging tool
I have a Tomcat running as a Windows Service, and those are known not to work well with jstack. jconsole is working well, on the other hand, and I can see stacks of individual threads (I'm connecting to "localhost:port" to access it).
How can I use jconsole or a similar tool to dump all the thread stacks into a file? (similar to jstack)
You can use the ThreadMXBean management interface.
This FullThreadDump class demonstrates the capability to get a full thread dump and also detect deadlock remotely using JMX.
Nowadays you can use jvisualvm tool to connect to your remote JVM through JMX and create a thread dump. Don't know if this was available
Here's another code sample that will write a stack dump to a file:
http://pastebin.com/zwcKC0hz
We use this over JMX to give us an approximation of the stack dump you get when you make a JMX request or if the process detects high, unexpected load.
It would be helpful if you take a flight recording to get a deeper view on the JVM behavior, specially focusing on the Hot Methods.
Usually, a recording of half an hour is enough. To trigger a recording, you must be logged in to the machines, and issue the following command:
If using Java HotSpot 1.8.x:
$JAVA_HOME/bin/jcmd VM.unlock_commercial_features
$JAVA_HOME/bin/jcmd JFR.start duration=1800s settings=profile filename=/tmp/recording.jfr
IF using java HotSpot 1.7.x:
Edit your $HOME/conf/wrapper.conf file by adding the following parameters on JVM startup:
wrapper.java.additiona.=-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures
wrapper.java.additional.=-XX:+FlightRecorder
(replace with the corresponding positional number )
Then, have your instances restarted. Once done, issue the following command :
$JAVA_HOME/bin/jcmd JFR.start duration=1800s settings=profile filename=/tmp/recording.jfr
The flight recording wil produce a file on /tmp/recording.jfr upon termination.
We have a curious problem with our java processes dying.
The application doesn't stacktrace, or write anything to the logs, the process just randomly dies. It's a heavily used application, but the problem only appears about once a month.
We're currently looking into using Process Monitor but any other suggestions would be welcome.
Edit:
It's a distributed Java application, running on Weblogic with an in-house web framework (Yes, this is a terrible idea, but it's been running for eight years), connecting to Oracle.
-
Out of Memory?
Our logs would catch java.lang.OutOfMemoryException, according to Brian Agnew.
Write crashes to a log? I don't think Java ever gets the chance, the death is happening at a process level, rather than Java exiting.
Can you wrap it in some shell script that captures the log files (stdout/stderr) and the exit code (which should give some indication as to how it died) ? On JVM exit you can also capture machine level stats using WMI
IF the VM itself is crashing it'll leave behind an hs_err_pid... file that contains stacktraces, machine-level debug info. You can then use that to diagnose the VM issue. See this blog entry for further information.
If the problem is related to the app's behaviour, it may be worth looking at JConsole, although from your description of the issue, this sounds much more like a low level VM issue.
(I assume you're on the latest VM for your Java version number etc.)
You can use a Linux NAGIOS Server to monitor the health of your Windows machines and services! Have a look at: nagios-monitoring-windows.
If you have such problems with your java app! You should test it and debug it! Applications shouldn't die without a trace! Look for logfiles! From which vendor is the app? Or is it self written? Try to enforce another Log4J/Logger/Debug Level. Monitor your System with cacti etc. to reduce the possibilities for such a crash. Talk to the software vendor.
Is enogh memory available? Maybe the app runs out of memory? Is it a standalone java process or a java process from a tomcat/jboss server?
Have you written down the crash times to a log? Appear they in different time-slices? Or appear they nearly time-circular?
VisualVM is a new tool which makes monitoring Java applications easier:
https://visualvm.dev.java.net/description.html
"VisualVM is a tool that provides detailed information about Java applications while they are running. It provides an intuitive graphical user interface that allows you to easily see information about multiple Java applications."
I like to generate a thread dump programmatically. I've learned that there a basically two ways to do it:
Use the "Java Virtual Machine Tool Interface" JVM-TI
Use the higher abstracted "Java Debugger Interface" JDI
For the JVM-TI I was able to find some useful information, but I would have to write a JNI-DLL which, at least for the moment, I would like to avoid. With the JDI I can use Java and it seems I'm able to use it from within the application. But I wasn't able to find some kind of tutorial or HOWTO for it. The only documentation I could find, were the Java-Docs http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/jpda/jdi/ which isn't very helpful, because it doesn't show me how to use this classes.
So, does anybody know of a good tutorial/book I could read?
Thx for any help!
There is a third way: Thread.getAllStackTraces()
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/Thread.html#getAllStackTraces()
This is much easier than the debugger interface...
You can get just about all the Thread info you need including deadlocks from http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/management/ThreadMXBean.html
Thread.getAllStackTraces() dumps only the execution trace of all the threads, but doesn't give the information of object locks that have been obtained by a particular thread or the lock on which a particular thread has been waiting. Basically, we'll not be able to nail down deadlocks with this.
Did you consider the remote alternative ? I.e. VisualVM
jps and jstack are also useful tools included in JDK 5, providing a quick command line method for obtaining stack traces of all current threads.
This article suggest JDI is also used as a remote tool.
So I am not sure you can triggers a thread dump within your own program, instead you find a way to send to yourself a SIGQUIT signal (kill -3) on Unix platforms, or press the Ctrl-\ key on Unix or Ctrl-Break on Windows platforms.
Plus, JDI wasn't intended to be used to debug the same process in which the JDI client is running. Still this thread I just linked to is the closest I have found to actually use JDI within the same program.