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I'm running a number of java processes on a windows XP professional machine. When i attempt to connect to these processes via a local JConsole the processes are grayed out.

However i can run the same processes on another machine and connect via a local JConsole on that machine.

Both machines are running java 1.6 version for the processes and jconsole.

Any ideas why these processes are grayed out?

richs
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  • are both machines running the same version of java 1.6? i have a vague recollection of there being some bugs related to this stuff in some of the jdk 1.6 releases. – jtahlborn May 11 '11 at 17:08
  • I ran one of processes and the jconsole using the exact same JDK, from that same directory. Still that process shows gray. – richs May 11 '11 at 17:33
  • right, i'm asking if the 2 different boxes are using the same version of the jdk. – jtahlborn May 11 '11 at 18:44
  • i tried uninstalling and re-installing a new version of the JDK, and it still didn't work. But i noticed that there was a system classpath with some reference to a java library for quicktime. i wish i had copied it. but i un-installed quicktime and now everything works. – richs May 11 '11 at 19:08

10 Answers10

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I'm fighting with this issue right now and I found out a work around:

You can change the local user's temp dir to something that they can definitely access (e.g. D:\temp). Make sure to do this for the process you're trying to monitor and the jconsole process.

Another thing that can apparently cause issues are usernames with uppercase letters in them. The directory will always be created with all lowercase letters, but simply renaming it to exactly how it's being shown in the Task Manager made all the issues go away: http://planeofthought.com/wp/?p=75

mhlz
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RegRog
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    Thank you RegRog. Your link from your edit did the trick +1. (I still don't like having to tell my users to rename the folder). Changing the name of the hsperfdata_ directory to hsperfdata_ worked for me. – km1 Dec 11 '12 at 22:05
  • This one hit the nail on the head for me. I also had a problem renaming this directory, but I was able to use the Sysinternals Process Explorer tool to determine that my copy of SmartSVN had the directory locked. Then I just shut down SmartSVN, renamed the directory and everything was fine. The directory re-created itself in the right case. – Robert Patterson Mar 25 '13 at 22:59
  • As hard as it is to believe, this actually worked! I.e. setting TEMP and TMP both to c:\temp. Unbelievable. Thanks! – fool4jesus Jun 01 '17 at 12:38
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if the processes are running as a different user (e.g. if you start them as services), then you won't be able to connect to them. also, if they are running under an older jvm, you most likely won't be able to talk to them either.

in some cases, the local jmx communication mechanism uses the local filesystem and may have issues if permissions are not defined correctly. are you possibly running any of these processes on networked filesystems (nfs, samba)?

jtahlborn
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Say your windows user name you use to start your java application seen in task manager is YOUR_USER_NAME. Please check a folder whose name looks like hsperfdata_XXXXX (XXXXX should be your user name) in your temp folder and make sure YOUR_USER_NAME and XXXXX are exactly the same (be careful about the upper and lower case).

Roland
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From http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/management/jconsole.html:

Applications that are not attachable, with the management agent disabled. These include applications started on a J2SE 1.4.2 platform or started on a J2SE 5.0 platform without the -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote or com.sun.management.jmxremote.port options. These applications appear grayed-out in the table and JConsole cannot connect to them. In the example connection dialog shown in Figure 3-1, the Anagrams application was started with a J2SE 5.0 platform VM without any of the management properties to enable the JMX agent, and consequently shows up in gray and cannot be selected.

Figure 3-1 Creating a Connection to a Local Process
(source: oracle.com)

Despite what's being written in the documentation, most likely your process is running under a different user. You can run jconsole as an administrator and try then.

Community
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Tomasz Nurkiewicz
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  • I opened the windows task manager and jconsole and my java processes are all for the same user. – richs May 11 '11 at 16:57
  • Hi Tomasz - running jconsole as administrator doesn't resolve the problem (though I would think it would). Have you run into this? Interestingly running Process Explorer as Administrator enable it to see the process info for this particular Java process. The workaround is to use `com.sun.management.jmxremote.port` and connect using "Remote Process" but it's not an optimal solution for me since I have many processes running and assigning unique ports to them is problematic. – sourcedelica Jul 05 '14 at 17:51
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Here is what worked for me. I changed my %TEMP% and %TMP% environment variables to point to a folder I created in my %HOME% location (like C:\Users\[YOUR_NAME]\Temp). Once I did this, all problems vanished.

Leigh
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Ayodeji Babaniyi
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I had the problem as described earlier, but was advised a simpler solution: just close all programs using Java ("IntelliJ IDEA", "SoapUI", etc. - to unlock the temporary folder) and then delete %TMP%\hsperfdata_<user.name> folder. Then, after opening any Java program, this folder will be recreated but this time with correct name (most likely %TMP%\hsperfdata_<User.Name>). And after that, local Java processes can be monitored through "JConsole" or "VisualVM" (now runs without starting error with a link to VisualVM: Troubleshooting Guide) again.

evgeny9
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instead of this steps you can just goto the CMD and then type in jconsole.exe (PID)

Remember to go to the path where jconsole is present and then run the executable file.

Pranjal Gohain
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Change the name of the hsperfdata folder which for me was found at C:\Users\pmimgg0\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_pmimgg0 to match the User name found on task manager. Once I changed hsperfdata_pmimgg0 to hsperfdata_PMIMGG0 my local process was no longer greyed out on jconsole.

enter image description here

Marcelino Galarza
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Change your TEMP paths in Environment Variables to something like D:\temp as it could be a permission issue. Fixed this issue for me

Nikhil
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The best way is to run local process like a remote process.

Add these conditions in runtime arguments -

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote=true
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=6001
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=localhost
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port=6001

Then select Remote Process and point to localhost:6001 as shown

JConsole New Connection

Click Connect and Jconsole is connected successfully.

For me this fixed as I had some admin constraints.

Archit Puri
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