List of running JVMs on the localhost

Question

How to get in Java 6+ the list of running JVMs on the localhost and their specs (i.e. Java version, running threads, etc.)?

Does the Java API provide such features?

Answer 1

As far as I know the jps provides the list of process launched using the jvm it belongs to. If you have multiple JDKs installed I don't think it would be of help. If you want a list of all java processes you have to use "ps -ef | grep java". I have seen many times JVsualVM couldn't identify all the java processes running on a specific host. If you requirement is specific to a JVM launched processes the above suggestions would apply.

Answer 2

This, I found out today, is basically what JPS does: simply list the folder /tmp/hsperfdata_foo/ where foo is the user running the JVM.

For some unknown reason, sometimes the files there won't be deleted when a JVM is killed.

Here are the links to the source code:

PerfDataFile.java

LocalVmManager