I have a standalone program that I run locally, it is meant to be a server type program running 24/7. Recently I found that it has a memory leak, right now our only solution is to restart it every 4 hours. What is the best way to go about finding this memory leak? Which tool and method should we use?
If you are using Java from Sun and you use at least Java 6 update 10 (i.e. the newest), then try running jvisualvm from the JDK on the same machine as your program is running, and attach to it and enable profiling.
This is most likely the simplest way to get started.
When it comes to hunting memory problems, I use SAP Memory Analyzer Eclipse Memory Analyser (MAT), a Heap Dump analysis tool.
The Memory Analyzer provides a general purpose toolkit to analyze Java heap dumps. Besides heap walking and fast calculation of retained sizes, the Eclipse tool reports leak suspects and memory consumption anti-patterns. The main area of application are Out Of Memory Errors and high memory consumption.
Initiated by SAP, the project has since been open sourced and is now know as Eclipse Memory Analyser. Check out the Getting Started page and especially the Finding Memory Leaks section (I'm pasting it below because I fixed some links):
Start by running the leak report to automatically check for memory leaks.
This blog details How to Find a Leaking Workbench Window.
The Memory Analyzer grew up at SAP. Back then, Krum blogged about Finding Memory Leaks with SAP Memory Analyzer. The content is still relevant!
This is probably the best tool you can get (even for money) for heap dump analysis (and memory leaks).
PS: I do not work for SAP/IBM/Eclipse, I'm just a very happy MAT user with positive feedback.
You need a memory profiler. I recommend trying the Netbeans profiler.
One approach would be to take heap dumps on a regular basis, then trend the instance counts of your classes to try to work out which objects are being consistently created but not collected.
Another would be to switch off parts of your app to try to narrow down where the problem is.
Look at tools like jmap and jhat.
You might look up JMX and the jconsole app that ships with Java. You can get some interesting statistics out-of-the-box, and adding some simple instrumentation to your classes can provide a whole lot more.
As already stated jvisualvm is a great way to get started, but once you know what is leaking you may need to find what is holding references to the objects in question for which I'd recommend jmap and jhat, e.g
jmap -dump:live,file=heap.dump.out,format=b <pid>
and
jhat heap.dump.out
where <pid> is easily found from jvisualvm. Then in a browser navigate to localhost:7000 and begin exploring.
You need to try and capture Java heap dump which is a memory print of the Java process.
It's a critical process for memory consumption optimisation and finding memory leaks.
Java heap dump is an essential object for diagnosing memory-linked issues including java.lang.OutOfMemoryError, Garbage Collection issues, and memory leaks which are all part of Java web development process
For clarity, a Heap dump contains information such as Java classes and objects in a heap during instant of taking the snapshot.
To do it, you need to run jmap -dump:file=myheap.bin <program pid>.
To learn more about how to capture Java heat dumps, check out: https://javatutorial.net/capture-java-heap-dump
Related
I've managed to get a memory 'leak' in a java application I'm developing. When running my JUnit test suite I randomly get out of memory exceptions (java.lang.OutOfMemoryError).
What tools can I use to examine the heap of my java application to see what's using up all my heap so that I can work out what's keeping references to objects which should be able to be garbage collected.
VisualVM is included in the most recent releases of Java. You can use this to create a heap dump, and look at the objects in it.
Alternatively, you can also create a heapdump commandine using jmap (in your jdk/bin dir):
jmap -dump:format=b,file=heap.bin <pid>
You can even use this to get a quick histogram of all objects
jmap -histo <pid>
I can recommend Eclipse Memory Analyzer (http://eclipse.org/mat) for advanced analysis of heap dumps. It lets you find out exactly why a certain object or set of objects is alive. Here's a blog entry showing you what Memory Analyzer can do: http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/memoryanalyzer/2008/05/27/automated-heap-dump-analysis-finding-memory-leaks-with-one-click/
If you need something free, try VisualVM
From the project's description:
VisualVM is a visual tool integrating commandline JDK tools and lightweight profiling capabilities. Designed for both development and production time use.
This is a pretty old question. A lot of people might have started using IntelliJ since it was originally answered. IntelliJ has a plugin that can show memory usage called JVM Debugger Memory View.
Use the Eclipse Memory Analyzer
There's no other tool that I'm aware of any tool that comes close to it's functionality and performance and price (free and open source) when analysing heap dumps.
Use a profiler like JProfiler or YourKitProfiler
JProfiler worked very well for me....
http://www.ej-technologies.com/products/jprofiler/overview.html
If you're using a system which supports GTK you could try using JMP.
You can try the Memory Leak Detector that is part of the JRockit Mission Control tools suite. It allows you to inspect the heap while the JVM is running. You don't need to take snapshots all the time. You can just connect online to the JVM and then see how the heap changes between garbage collections. You can also inspect objects, follow references graphically and get stack traces from where your application is currently allocating objects. Here is a brief introduction.
The tool is free to use for development and you can download it here.
I have a Java web server running as a Windows service.
I use Tomcat 8 with Java 1.8.*
For a few months now, I've detected that the memory usage is increasing quite rapidly. I cannot make up for sure if it's heap or stack.
The process starts with ~200MB and after a week or so, it can reach up to 2GB.
Shortly after it will generate OutOfMemory exception (the memory usage will be 2GB - 2.5GB).
This has repeated multiple times on multiple environments.
I would like to know if there's a way to monitor the process and view it's internal memory usage, even to the level of viewing which objects are using the most amount of memory.
Can 'Java Native Memory Tracking' be used for this?
This will help me to detect any memory leaks that might cause this.
Thanks in advance.
To monitor the memory usage of a Java process, I'd use a JMX client such as JVisualVM, which is bundled with the Oracle JDK:
https://visualvm.java.net/jmx_connections.html
To identify the cause of a memory leak, I'd instruct the JVM to take a heap dump when it runs out of memory (on the Oracle JVM, this can be accomplished by specifying -XX:-HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError when starting your Java program), and then analyze that heap dump using a tool such as Eclipse MAT.
quoting:
the process starts with ~200MB and after a week or so, it can reach up to 2GB. Shortly after it will generate OutOfMemory exception (the memory usage will be 2GB - 2.5GB).
The problem might not be as simple as seeing what java objects you have got in JVisualVM (e.g millions of strings)
What you need to do is identify the code that leaks.
One way you could do that is to force the execution of particular code and then monitor the memory.
The easiest way to force the execution of code inside classes/objects is to use a tool like https://github.com/lorenzoongithub/nudge4j (particularly since you are on java 8)
alternatively you could just wire up nashorn to a command line or run your progam via jjs https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/scripting/nashorn/shell.html
I think I may have a memory leak in a servlet application running in production on jetty 8.1.7.
Is there a way of seeing how much heap memory is actually being used at an instance of time, not the max memory allocated with -Xmx, but the actual amount of memory being used.
Can I force a garbage collection to occur for an application running within jetty
yes, both are easily achievable using: VisualVM (see: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/visualvm/monitor_tab.html) This one is shipped with Oracle JDK by default (=> no extra installation required)
However for the memory leak detection, I'd suggest to do memory dump and analyze it later with eclipse MAT ( http://www.eclipse.org/mat/ ) as it has quite nice UI visualizing java memory dumps.
EDIT:
For the ssh only access, yes you can use the mentioned two tools. However you need to run them on the machine with running window manager and remotely connect over ssh to the other machine (you need to have java on both of these machines):
For visualVM: you need to have VisualVM running on one maching and via the ssh connect to remote one, see: VisualVM over ssh
and for the memory dump: use jmap (for sample usage see: http://kadirsert.blogspot.de/2012/01/…) afterwards download the dump file and load if locally to eclipse MAT
enable jmx and connect up to it using jconsole
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Jetty/Tutorial/JMX
You can call System.gc(). That will typically perform a full GC ... but this facility can be disabled. (There is a JVM option to do this with HotSpot JVMs.)
However, if your problem is a memory leak, running the GC won't help. In fact, it is likely to make your server even slower than it currently is.
You can also monitor the memory usage (in a variety of ways - see other Answers) but that only gives you evidence that a memory leak might leak.
What you really need to do is find and fix the cause of the memory leak.
Reference:
How to find a Java Memory Leak
You can use jvisualvm.exe which is under the %JAVA_HOME%\bin folder. By using this application you can monitor memory usage and can force gc.
In a java heap dump how do I know exactly where in the code/which thread caused the dump?
For reading the memory dumps:
I would recommend you to try "eclipse memory analyzer" From here
Another option (free) would be opening this with JVisualVM (available at $JAVA_HOME/bin)
jhat is cool too but was already recommended :)
Now, you're asking about the thread that caused memory heap-dump and not about how to proceed with memory dump...
It depends on how did you obtain the memory dump.
There are different ways to obtain the dump.
On your process you can instruct the JVM to produce memory dump once OutOfMemory error is encountered, in this case I believe it will be the JVM itself.
You can trigger the heap dump creation from the MBean given you have a JMX Server running along with your JVM
Example
You can even use system calls (on linux) externally to your application: kill -3 _YOUR_JAVA_PROCESS_ID_ will generation the heapdump.
But I hardly can imagine why would you need such an information. Later in comments you mention 'exact line of code' but these ways are usually external to your JVM... Are you sure you need a line of code that generated heap dump itself, or you're trying to identify the real issue?
Hope this helps
In java you create object some where, use it in many places and the let GC to collect it back. There is no single line causing a leak.
What you should look for in tools like MAP is objects count and heap used by them. Pick each of the target class and see why they are not garbage collected. (some one is holding reference more than needed- say a static field )
You may find instructions from this page more useful - http://scn.sap.com/people/krum.tsvetkov/blog/2007/07/02/finding-memory-leaks-with-sap-memory-analyzer (also linked from MAT homepage)
Try to use Java Heap Analysis Tool(jhat) or jconsole (that is in your JAVA_HOME\bin).
I've been tasked with debugging a Java (J2SE) application which after some period of activity begins to throw OutOfMemory exceptions. I am new to Java, but have programming experience. I'm interested in getting your opinions on what a good approach to diagnosing a problem like this might be?
This far I've employed JConsole to get a picture of what's going on. I have a hunch that there are object which are not being released properly and therefor not being cleaned up during garbage collection.
Are there any tools I might use to get a picture of the object ecosystem? Where would you start?
I'd start with a proper Java profiler. JConsole is free, but it's nowhere near as full featured as the ones that cost money. I used JProfiler, and it was well worth the money. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14762/please-recommend-a-java-profiler for more options and opinions.
Try the Eclipse Memory Analyzer, or any other tool that can process a java heap dump, and then run your app with the flap that generates a heap dump when you run out of memory.
Then analyze the heap dump and look for suspiciously high object counts.
See this article for more information on the heap dump.
EDIT: Also, please note that your app may just legitimately require more memory than you initially thought. You might try increasing the java minimum and maximum memory allocation to something significantly larger first and see if your application runs indefinitely or simply gets slightly further.
The latest version of the Sun JDK includes VisualVM which is essentially the Netbeans profiler by itself. It works really well.
http://www.yourkit.com/download/index.jsp is the only tool you'll need.
You can take snapshots at (1) app start time, and (2) after running app for N amount of time, then comparing the snapshots to see where memory gets allocated. It will also take a snapshot on OutOfMemoryError so you can compare this snapshot with (1).
For instance, the latest project I had to troubleshoot threw OutOfMemoryError exceptions, and after firing up YourKit I realised that most memory were in fact being allocated to some ehcache "LFU " class, the point being that we specified loads of a certain POJO to be cached in memory, but us not specifying enough -Xms and -Xmx (starting- and max- JVM memory allocation).
I've also used Linux's vmstat e.g. some Linux platforms just don't have enough swap enabled, or don't allocate contiguous blocks of memory, and then there's jstat (bundled with JDK).
UPDATE see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14762/please-recommend-a-java-profiler
You can also add an "UnhandledExceptionHandler" to your Application's Thread. This will catch 'uncaught' exception, like an out of memory error, and you will at least have an idea where the exception was thrown. Usually this not were the problem is but the 'new' that couldn't be satisfied. As a rule I always add the UnhandledExceptionHandler to a Thread if nothing else to add logging.