Profiling a running Java application in command line

Question

I profile running Java applications often with VisualVM but it needs X to run on the machine.

I know I can connect through management port but that will be an offlin

Answer 1

The jvmtop application is a convenient tool for profiling from the commandline. No need to stop the jvm. Usage:

jvmtop.sh --profile 

Will give you output like this which will be updating while the app runs:

  Profiling PID 24015: org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap
  36.16% (    57.57s) hudson.model.AbstractBuild.calcChangeSet()
  30.36% (    48.33s) hudson.scm.SubversionChangeLogParser.parse()
   7.14% (    11.37s) org.kohsuke.stapler.jelly.JellyClassTearOff.parseScript()
  ...

The advantage is that it does not take the use of instrumentation. The classes of the to-be-profiled jvm will not be altered.

If you are looking for something more visual then have a look at jvm-mon which is based on jvmtop