Adding -javaagent to Tomcat 6 server, where do I put it and in what format?

Question

I´m trying to install an application health monitoring application that can monitor J2EE web transactions and I need to put a javaagent into my Tomcat somehow but am not clear on exactly how to do this, I am using Linux and have been instructed by the software company that makes this product to do something like below:

-javaagent:<Path to the WebTransactionAgent.jar>

I have received further support from them and they basically said to put this into the appropriate .sh file (but they weren´t able to tell me which file that is for Tomcat)

I tried putting this in the catalina.sh file but it does not seem to be working:

JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -javaagent:"C:\WebTransactionAgent.jar"

Any advice is appreciated

Answer 1

For Unix/Linux, do this in <tomcat_home>/bin/setenv.sh, e.g.

CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -javaagent:/path/to/YourJar.jar"

You might need to create this file if not present and chmod it to 711 or 755.

For Windows, the counterpart is setenv.bat.

Answer 2

To add to mindas' answer, the -javaagent command could also be added to the JAVA_OPTS environment variable in one of the following (if they exist):

<tomcat_home>/conf/tomcat6.conf

JAVA_OPTS="${JAVA_OPTS} -javaagent:/full/path/to/YourJar.jar"

or <tomcat_home>/bin/catalina.sh

export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -javaagent:/full/path/to/YourJar.jar"

Answer 3

Use JAVA_OPTS as CATALINA_OPTS would not allow JVM options [option2]=[value2].

Example, for adding jacocoagent.jar with options as below, only JAVA_OPTS will work.

JAVA_OPTS="${JAVA_OPTS} -javaagent:$CATALINA_HOME/lib/jacocoagent.jar=destfile=/tmp/jacoco.exec"