The release of JDK 8 introduced Java Mission Control, Java Flight Recorder, and jcmd utility for diagnosing problems with JVM and Java applications. It is suggested to use the latest utility, jcmd instead of the previous jstack utility for enhanced diagnostics and reduced performance overhead.
The following sections describe troubleshooting techniques with jstack utility.
The jstack command-line utility attaches to the specified process or core file and prints the stack traces of all threads that are attached to the virtual machine, including Java threads and VM internal threads, and optionally native stack frames. The utility also performs deadlock detection.
The utility can also use the jsadebugd daemon to query a process or core file on a remote machine. Note: The output takes longer to print in this case.
A stack trace of all threads can be useful in diagnosing a number of issues, such as deadlocks or hangs.
The -l option, which instructs the utility to look for ownable synchronizers in the heap and print information about java.util.concurrent.locks. Without this option, the thread dump includes information only on monitors.
The output from the jstack pid option is the same as that obtained by pressing Ctrl+\ at the application console (standard input) or by sending the process a QUIT signal. See Control+Break Handler for an output example.
Thread dumps can also be obtained programmatically using the Thread.getAllStackTraces method, or in the debugger using the debugger option to print all thread stacks (the where command in the case of the jdb sample debugger).
For more details on the jstack utility, see the jstack command man page.
If the jstack pid command does not respond because of a hung process, then the -F option can be used (on Oracle Solaris and Linux operating systems only) to force a stack dump, as shown in Example 2-29.
To obtain stack traces from a core dump, execute the jstack command on a core file, as shown in Example 2-30.
The jstack utility can also be used to print a mixed stack; that is, it can print native stack frames in addition to the Java stack. Native frames are the C/C++ frames associated with VM code and JNI/native code.
To print a mixed stack, use the -m option, as shown in Example 2-31.
Frames that are prefixed with an asterisk (*) are Java frames, whereas frames that are not prefixed with an asterisk are native C/C++ frames.
The output of the utility can be piped through c++filt to demangle C++ mangled symbol names. Because the Java HotSpot VM is developed in the C++ language, the jstack utility prints C++ mangled symbol names for the Java HotSpot internal functions.
The c++filt utility is delivered with the native C++ compiler suite: SUNWspro on Oracle Solaris operating system and gnu on Linux.
