Wednesday, February 17, 2010

jconsole,jmap and tomcat as windows service

1. Install a service using sc.exe - that will open a command prompt under local service account by executing this on cmd window

sc create debugservice binpath= "cmd /K start" type= own type= interact

2. sc start debugservice

[on a remote desktop session, this service has to be started only in console session for the command prompt window to pop up]

will print message that [SC] StartService FAILED 1053: but will start a command prompt under local system account.

3. now navigate to %JAVA_HOME%/bin on the command prompt that got opened and type in
jmap -dump:format=b,file=D:\temp\test.hprof
this will dump the heap to D:\temp folder.


Be careful dumping heap on a live system as it will lock up the system for the duration of heap dump.


4. similarly jconsole can be started using that command prompt and connecting to the pid of the tomcat.

Technical explanation:
a. as tomcat service is installed under local system account, jconsole / jmap cannot connect to the service when these are started under the windows logged in user.
b. So the command prompt interactive service is installed as a local system service and when that service is started, it opens the command prompt under local system account.
c. And hence any process started from that command prompt will be started under local system account and hence be able to access any local system services.