how to generate websphere thread dump without wsadmin on windows server

Question

I have websphere application server v 7 over windows server and I want to generate thread dumps because i have thread hungs, but when I try to get the java cores with wsadmin appears an error, so I want to generate java core files like linux using kill -3 .

Is there something like this in Windows server ?.

Answer 1

Like ObiWanKenobi mentioned, your best bet would probably be through the deployment manager administrative console. From IBM's support site:

Set the com.ibm.websphere.threadmonitor.dump.java property to true:

Application Servers:

1. From the administrative console, click Servers > Application Servers > server_name.
2. Under Server Infrastructure, click Administration > Custom Properties.
3. Click New and add the following property:

Name: com.ibm.websphere.threadmonitor.dump.java

Value: true

4. Click Apply.
5. Click OK and save the configuration changes.
6. Restart the Application Server for the changes to take effect.

Node Agent:

1. From the administrative console, click System Administration > Node Agents > nodeagent.
2. Under Additional Properties, click Administration Services
3. Under Additional Properties, click Custom Properties
4. Click New and add the following property:

Name: com.ibm.websphere.threadmonitor.dump.java

Value: true

5. Click Apply.
6. Click OK and save the configuration changes.
7. Restart the Node Agent for the changes to take effect.

Answer 2

In short, there is no good answer.

The closest would be to use something like SendSignal. See the Can I send a ctrl-C (SIGINT) to an application on Windows? question for more information. Unfortunately, SendSignal doesn't work reliably on all versions of Windows (see my Send ctrl-break to java process on 64-bit Windows ala sendsignal on 32-bit question).

If you're willing to write some custom code, you could write a Java program that uses the attach API to load a Java agent that calls the Dump API. (I suspect that IBM Support Assistant has this capability built-in, but it's been too long since I tried to be authoritative on this point.)

Answer 3

You can make the JVM to do a thread dump when there are 'hung' threads messages in the SystemOut.log: Add com.ibm.websphere.threadmonitor.dump.java=true under JVM's Administration > Custom Properties.