Troubleshooting Java™ SE

(For troubleshooting information for J2SE release 5.0, see Troubleshooting J2SE 5.0.)

Note: To see technical support options, visit our Developer Services site.

Contents of This Page

Troubleshooting Guides
Quick Tips!
Troubleshooting Tools
Pertinent Articles
Pertinent Blogs
Pertinent Forum Sites

Troubleshooting Guides

Two separate troubleshooting guides are available (in English only) to help you diagnose and solve problems that occur in applications running on Java SE 6:

• Troubleshooting Guide for Java SE 6 with HotSpot VM (pdf version and html version)
  • For help with problems that occur between the application and the Java HotSpot virtual machine.
  • Describes the Java SE troubleshooting tools, how to develop your own tools using the APIs provided with the platform, several suggested troubleshooting procedures, how to submit bug reports, and detailed reference information. In addition, the document summarizes the changes in the troubleshooting tools since the previous release.
  • Document last updated November 2008
• Troubleshooting Guide for Java SE 6 Desktop Technologies (pdf version and html version)
  • For help with problems that occur with a Java SE desktop application.
  • Describes common issues which can occur with Java SE desktop technologies, such as Swing, AWT, Java 2D, and so forth, as well as suggestions for troubleshooting these issues.
  • Document last updated September 2008

Quick Tips!

For a few quick tips, consult these tables of typical troubleshooting needs, with corresponding commands, by platform.

• Tips on Solaris OS and Linux for Java SE 6
• Tips on Windows for Java SE 6

See also the section Summary of Tools, Options, and Commands in the Troubleshooting Guide for Java SE 6 with HotSpot VM.

Troubleshooting Tools

Consult the following summaries of JDK troubleshooting tool for Java SE 6, by platform, including links to man pages, where available. Note that these tools are unsupported and experimental in nature, and they might not be available in future JDK versions.

• Tools on Solaris OS and Linux
• Tools on Windows

Pertinent Articles for Troubleshooting

• Monitoring and Managing Java SE 6 Platform Applications by Mandy Chung - How to use several monitoring and management tools to troubleshoot common problems with Java SE applications.
• Troubleshooting Java SE Deployment by Chuk-Munn Lee - Several ways to troubleshoot running Java SE applications, with examples.
• Introduction to Java VisualVM - Overview of Java™ VisualVM, the all-in-one graphical and extensible troubleshooting tool.
• Profiling With VisualVM, Part 1 - How to use the out-of-the-box profiling features of Java VisualVM.
• Profiling With VisualVM, Part 2 - How to use the advanced profiling features of Java VisualVM.

Pertinent Blogs for Troubleshooting

The Planet JDK site represents an aggregation of JDK developers' blogs.

The following is a (non-exhaustive) list of bloggers' helpful information and tips for troubleshooting Java SE applications.

• The NetBeans Profiler blog: Includes NetBeans Profiler and Java VisualVM
• Luis-Miguel Alventosa's blog: Changes to JConsole GUI in Java SE 6
• Jean-Francois Arcand's blog: Using jmap and jhat to troubleshoot memory leak
• Alan Bateman's blog:
  • OOME message; jstack, JConsole, HPROF, and jhat tools
  • Demos of monitoring & management and heapViewer
  • Easy starting (attach-on-demand) with JConsole
• Mandy Chung's blog:
  • How to get thread dumps, especially using JConsole, which also shows deadlock information
  • Summary of new features in Java SE 6 for Monitoring, Management, Diagnosability
• Danny Coward's blog: Crash Course: Java SE Monitoring, Management, and Troubleshooting
• Daniel Fuchs' blog: JConsole, JMX, etc.
• Frank Kieviet's blog: "OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space" exception
• Keith McGuigan's blog: Description of DTrace probe providers hotspot and hotspot_jni
• Eamonn McManus' blog: JConsole and MBeans
• Kelly O'Hair's blog: jhat utility, HPROF tool
• A. Sundararajan's (Sundar) blog:
  • Serviceability Agent, command-line arguments, creating binary heap dumps, using DTrace, JConsole, all troubleshooting tools
  • viewing heap histogram
  • Querying Java heap with OQL (Object Query Language)
  • Perm gen analysis with OQL
  • jrunscript, heapViewer demo, attach-on-demand API

Pertinent Forum Sites for Troubleshooting

Visit the various forum sites, where you can browse for information and post your own questions. Perhaps someone else has already encountered your problem! Use the Search facility on the forum site to specify your problem area.

This is a very brief list of pointers to the high-level entries into some of these sites.

• Java Technology Forums, including categories (among many others) such as:
  • Monitoring and management
  • Java Desktop: Java 2D, AWT, Swing, Deployment, and much more
  • Debugging and profiling
  • BigAdmin troubleshooting topics: system-level issues
• java.net online community forums, including categories (among many others) such as:
  • JDK: memory leaks, crashes, and much more
  • Java Desktop: Java 2D, AWT, Swing, Deployment, and much more
  • Performance
  • Java Tools: various development and runtime tools
• JavaDesktop Community (a java.net member): various Java SE desktop technologies
• Java Games Forums (a java.net community): various Java SE desktop technologies

Page last updated: 14 November 2008