Can Sun JDK generate core/heap dump files when JVM crashes?

Question

Is there anyway to generate core/heap dump file when JVM crashes? Since these files are usually very helpful to find out bugs in code.

Solution 1

With the following JVM options:

-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError 
-XX:HeapDumpPath="/tmp"

JVM will dump the content of heap to a file in specified directory. Note that this only happens when OutOfMemoryError is thrown since dump isn't really needed if JVM crashed due to a different reason.

Edit: "Boolean options are turned on with -XX:+ and turned off with -XX:-." docs

Solution 2

You can use -XX:HeapDump JVM options.

Comments

[gerrytan]

Should be -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError (with plus symbol) because minus actually turns it off