Accessing JMX remotely via VisualVM from jetty

During my testing I was getting some of weird numbers in GNUPlot so wanted to see what is happening inside JVM.

My application was deployed on Jetty 6.x version. I uncommented jetty-jmx.xml and passed it as parameter during startup i.e. java - jar start.jar etc/jetty-jmx.xml. Hoping that jmx connectors will start on RMI default 1099 port. Started visualvm and tried connecting to my remote jvm using the hostname:1099 port. Got connection refused exception.

I googled and found it's not to do it. There were million things suggested on the net. i.e. start jetty with remote-jmx parameter by specifying the port and then establish ssh tunnel on that port and then connect visualvm to it.

My pair(Chris) and I did all those but somewhere within me I was certain that I don't have to do all these ceremony to connect and it's because we use to connect to Tomcat similarly and the only configuration which we added was jmx related in catalina.sh file.

We followed couple of blogs and no success. Then thought of upgrading the jetty version to 8.x and followed the same steps of uncommenting "createRegistry" and "ConnectorServer" portion within jetty-jmx.xml file.

Then started the server. I got same error. Then found out the we have to specify the ip address of remote host during jetty start up.

java -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=YOUR_IP -jar start.jar etc/jetty-jmx.xml

Once you will do that you will notice that a URL will get printed on you start up console, copy the URL and change the localhost with your ip address and put the same on to visualvm. Boom it got connected. Now I know and it's simple. For me the url was "service:jmx:rmi:/hostname/jndi/rmi://YOUR_IP:1099/jettyjmx"

Just incase any of you are looking for parameters for enabling stuff in tomcat. Here are they.

In catalina.sh file add the below line anywhere in the beginning around line number 150 :P.

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9004 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=YOUR_IP"

Then connect using your_ip:9004 in visualvm.


Did not have lots of fun
Manisha