1 Reply Latest reply on Jun 26, 2015 4:28 AM by adinn

    Byteman agent fails to load on the IBM J9 VM

    mmusgrov
    mmusgrov Jun 25, 2015 12:07 PM

      We use BMUnitRunner test annotation to dynamically load the agent into the IBM J9 VM which fails with

       

      *** java.lang.instrument ASSERTION FAILED ***: "jvmtierror == JVMTI_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE" at JPLISAgent.c line: 1009

      Exception in thread "Attachment 59984" Agent failed to start!

      JVMJ9TI064E Agent initialization function Agent_OnAttach failed for library instrument, return code 102

       

      We have raised issue [JBTM-2440] Byteman tests fail when running with the IBM JVM - JBoss Issue Tracker to track the problem.


      Is this something that bytman could support, in which case I will raise a byteman issue, or alternatively is there a workaround?

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        • 1. Re: Byteman agent fails to load on the IBM J9 VM
          adinn
          adinn Jun 26, 2015 4:28 AM (in response to mmusgrov)

          Hi Mike,

          Is this something that bytman could support?

           

          I think you will have to ask the IBM J9 team about that or -- if you are really desperate -- read the J9 manual.

           

          Byteman relies upon the underlying host JVM/JDK to support the Java agent Attach API. The error message suggests that -- at least with the default configuration -- J9 does not support this API. It may be that J9 does support it but disables it by default. I don't really know the answer to that.

           

          Ok, I looked online and the IBM docs appears to suggest that Java agents are supported from the command line. It also looks like they may require a property setting for dynamic loading using the Attach API. Did this work using the J9 JDK7 release? If so then this may represent a change from enabling agents by default to disabling them by default. If that is correct you could try running with this define on the command line

           

          -Dcom.ibm.tools.attach.enable=yes


          The JDK8 docs offer this setting as a way of enabling agent loads to proceed.


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