## Remote profiling - application servers and standalone applications |
previous | up | next

### 1. Introduction

Although it is easiest to profile applications and application servers that are running on your local machine, sometimes it is not possible to replicate the execution environment on your computer. If you have no physical access to the remote machine or if the remote machine has no GUI where you could run JProfiler, you have to set up remote profiling.

Remote profiling means that the profiling agent is running on the remote machine and the JProfiler GUI is running on your local machine. Profiling agent and JProfiler GUI communicate with each other through a socket. As explained in the background article on JProfiler, this situation is fundamentally the same as running a "local session", just that the socket communication socket connects between different machines. The main difference for you is that for local sessions you don't have to worry about the location of native libraries and that the startup sequence can be managed by JProfiler.

### 2. The remote integration wizard

All integration wizards in JProfiler can help you with setting up remote profiling. After choosing the integration type or application server, the wizard asks you where the profiled application is located. If you choose the remote option, there will be additional questions regarding the remote machine.

When the remote integration wizard asks you for startup scripts or other files of the application server on the remote machine it brings up a standard file selector. If the file system of the remote machine is accessible as a network drive or mounted into your file system, you can select those files and JProfiler will directly write modified files to the right location.

If you do not have direct access to the file system of the remote machine, you can still copy the required files to the local machine. However, you must then transfer the modified or new files back to the remote machine after the integration wizard has completed.

### 3. Requirements for remote profiling

Although the integration wizards in JProfiler give you all required information, it's always a good idea to have a little more inside knowledge about the mechanics and the requirements of remote profiling. When trouble-shooting a failed integration, you should check that the requirements below are fulfilled correctly.

The following requirements have to be satisfied for remote profiling:

1. JProfiler has to be installed on the local machine and on the remote machine. If the remote machine is a Unix machine, you might not be able to run the GUI installer of JProfiler. In this case, please use the `.tar.gz` archive to install JProfiler.

   You do not have to enter a license key on the remote machine, the license key is always provided by the JProfiler GUI. Because of that, it is sufficient to unpack JProfiler to any directory where you have write permission.

2. The operating system and the architecture of the remote machine must be explicitly supported by JProfiler. Please see the list of supported platforms for more information. JProfiler is not a pure Java application, it contains a lot of native code which is not easily portable to unsupported platforms.
3. The native library path on the remote machine must contain the platform-specific directory in the `bin` directory of the JProfiler installation. The "native library path" is defined by a different environment variable on each platform. For example, on Windows, it is simply the `PATH` environment variable, on Linux it is `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`. The help page on remote sessions in the reference section tells you the corresponding environment variables for all platforms.

4. On the remote machine, you have to add a number of VM parameters to the java invocation of your application server or your standalone application. The fundamental VM parameters are `-Xrunjprofiler`, which tells the JVM to load the native profiling agent and `-Xbootclasspath/a:{path to agent.jar}` which adds required Java classes to the bootclasspath. `agent.jar` is located in the `bin` directory of your JProfiler installation.

   Depending on your JVM and your platform, you have to add further VM parameters to your java invocation. The remote session invocation table in the reference section gives you the exact parameter sequence for your configuration.

5. On the local machine, you have to define a remote session whose "host" entry points to the remote machine.

### 4. Starting remote profiling

If you run the integration wizard for a local application server, JProfiler will be able to start it and connect to it. JProfiler has no way to start the application server if it is located on a remote machine. For remote applications and application servers, you have to perform two actions to start the profiling session:

1. Execute the modified start script on the remote machine. The application or application server will not start up, it prints a few lines of information and tells you that it is waiting for a connection.
2. Start the remote session in the JProfiler GUI on the local machine. The remote session will connect to the remote computer and the remote application or application server will then start up.

### 5. Trouble-shooting

When things don't work out as expected, please have a look at the terminal output of the profiled application or application server on the remote machine. For application servers, the stderr stream might be written to a log file. Depending on the content of the stderr output, the search for the problem takes different directions:

- If stderr contains `"Waiting for connection ..."`, the configuration of the remote machine is ok. The problem might then be related to the following questions:
  - Did you forget to start the remote session in the JProfiler GUI on your local machine?
  - Is the host name or the IP address correctly configured in the remote session?
  - Is there a firewall between the local machine or the remote machine?
- If stderr contains an error message about not being able to bind a socket, the port is already in use. The problem might then be related to the following questions:
  - Did you start JProfiler multiple times on the remote machine? Each profiled application needs a separate communication port. Please see below on how to change that port.
  - Are there any zombie java processes of previous profiling runs that are blocking the port? In this case please kill these processes.
  - Is there a different application on the remote machine that is using the JProfiler port? Please see below on how to change the port for JProfiler.

  The communication port is defined as a parameter to the `-Xrunjprofiler` VM parameter. To define a communication port of 25000, please change this VM parameter to `-Xrunjprofiler:port=25000`. Also, please make sure that the same port is configured in the remote session in the JProfiler GUI on your local machine. Please note that this port has nothing to do with HTTP or other standard port numbers and must not be the same as any port that's already in use on the remote machine.

- If stderr contains an error message about not being able to load native libraries, the native library path is not configured correctly. Please see the requirements above on how to configure the native library directory. If the problem persist, it might be a problem with dependencies. On Unix platforms, you can execute

            LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ldd libjprofiler.so

  in the native library directory to get information about missing dependencies. On Microsoft Windows, you can download the dependency walker from http://www.dependencywalker.com to analyze the problem.

  Please note that it is not a good idea to define the VM parameter `java.library.path`. If you absolutely have to do that, please make sure that the definition contains the appropriate native library directory for JProfiler.

- If stderr contains a `NoClassDefFound` exception for a class in the `com.jprofiler.agent` package, the bootclasspath has not been configured correctly. Please see the requirements above on how to configure the bootclasspath. Putting `agent.jar` in the regular classpath does not help and may actually be harmful.

- If there are no lines in stderr that are prefixed with `JProfiler>` and your application or application server starts up normally, the `-Xrunjprofiler` VM parameter has not been included in the java call. Please find out which java call in your startup script is actually executed and add the VM parameters there.