I want to get a dump of the PermGen to see why it is filling. Is there a way to analyze this? I already know about the common suspects like log4j, tomcat webapp reloading etc, but I have some custom proxy generation code in my application, too, and just want to look under the hood.
Is this possible somehow?
You can use the flags:
-XX:+TraceClassLoading -XX:+TraceClassUnloading
They print the identities of classes as they get loaded/unloaded from the permanent generation. If you add -XX:+PrintGCDetails you can also track the size of the permgen.
Note that i'm not sure the flags are supported in JVMs other than Sun's.
Another suspect of PermGen out-of-memory-errors is string interning. Check the places where you intern strings in your code.
If you're looking to get a list of all classes loaded you can use jconsole. Click on the classes tab then click "Verbose Output". That will print each class that is loaded to stdout. I found this very useful tracking down a JAXB proxy class issue.
You may have to launch your application with the -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote command line option in order for jconsole to attach to it.
Will jmap -permgen fit the bill?
See the troubleshooting guide for Java http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/trouble/TSG-VM/html/memleaks.html#gbyuu
I am specifying the below command in catalina.bat >
set JAVA_OPTS=-XX:+TraceClassLoading -XX:+TraceClassUnloading -XX:+PrintGCDetails
The logs are printed in console but i am not able to redirect the logs in file. Using startup.bat > logs.txt
Can anyone tell me how to save/trace the console logs??