ways how to get heap dump from running tomcat 7

Question

I\'ve tried this Get a heapdump on JVM from Tomcat 6 but it doesn\'t work for me, Is there other ways to get heap dump from tomcat server? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Another way besides the "Dump heap"-Button of jvisualvm is via the JMX-interface. This way even allows you to specify where to store the dump.

connect to tomcat's JMX-server using jconsole or jvisualvm with JMX-plugin. Then got to com.sun.management -> HotSpotDiagnotic -> Operations. Next to dumpHeap fill in the two parameters. From oracle's documentation (see here):

Parameters:

outputFile - the system-dependent filename

live - if true dump only live objects i.e. objects that are reachable from others

Then press dumpHeap and watch the VM freeze for some time while writing the dump.