FAQ Troubleshooting and Diagnostics

Troubleshooting and Diagnostics techniques.

Techniques & Reference

• How To: Capture a thread dump
• How To: Capture a heap dump
• How To: Examine a Stacktrace
• How To: Configure Tomcat for debugging
• FAQ: Developing
• FAQ: Memory
• Tomcat Memory Leak Protection
• Sun Technical Article: Monitoring and Managing Java SE 6 Platform Applications
• Notes on using JMX clients
  

Tools

JMX Clients

• JConsole Docs
• VisualVM Docs Project
  

JDK tools (Experimental)

• jinfo - Prints JVM process info
• jstack - Prints thread stack traces
• jmap - Dumps heap and shows heap status
• jhat - Heap Analyzer Tool
  

Profilers & Heap Analyzers

• Eclipse Memory Analyzer (MAT)
• YourKit Profiler

• [JProbe| |http://www.quest.com/jprobe/]

• VisualVM Docs
  

Notes on using JMX clients

When running a JMX client (JConsole, VisualVM) on the same machine as the target JVM process it is possible to connect without pre-configuring a JMX port, using the local connector stub. This method relies on being able to create a protected temporary file, accessible only to a user with administrator privileges. Java processes which are accessible via the local connector will automatically appear in the client.

NB(1) On Windows, this means that the temporary directory must be located on an NTFS formatted disk. See the following link for more details.

NB(2) On Windows, if Tomcat is started using a service wrapper, this will prevent JConsole & VisualVM from using the local JMX connector stub.

JConsole and Remote Management FAQ

From Java 6 a process needn't have the management agent enabled when it starts, as the Attach API permits the management agent to be activated on demand.

Common Troubleshooting Scenario

If you have already looked into Tomcat logs, there are no error messages, and you just want to find out what is going on, you may try the following

1. Look into Tomcat access log (the log file generated by AccessLogValve).
   
   • If your request is not listed there, then it has not been processed by Tomcat. You need to look elsewhere (e.g. at your firewall).
   • You will see what IP address your client is using, and whether it is using an IPv4 (127.0.0.1) or IPv6 address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1). Modern operating systems can use IPv6 addresses for localhost / local network access, while external network is still using IPv4.
     2. Take a thread dump. This way you will find out what Tomcat is actually doing.
     
   • If you are troubleshooting some process that takes noticeable time, take several (three) thread dumps with some interval between them. This way you will see if there are any changes, any progress.
     3. Try debugging.
     
   • A good place for a breakpoint is org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service() method. That is the entry point from Tomcat connectors and into the Servlet engine. At that place your request has already been received and its processing starts.
     

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