How to check heap usage of a running JVM from the command line?

Question

Can I check heap usage of a running JVM from the commandline, I mean the actual usage rather than the max amount allocated with Xmx.

I need it to be commandline because I don't have access to a windowing environment, and I want script based on the value , the application is running in Jetty Application server

Answer 1

You can use jstat, like :

 jstat -gc pid 

Full docs here : http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/tools/share/jstat.html

Answer 2

For Java 8 you can use the following command line to get the heap space utilization in kB:

jstat -gc <PID> | tail -n 1 | awk '{split($0,a," "); sum=a[3]+a[4]+a[6]+a[8]; print sum}' 

The command basically sums up:

• S0U: Survivor space 0 utilization (kB).
• S1U: Survivor space 1 utilization (kB).
• EU: Eden space utilization (kB).
• OU: Old space utilization (kB).

You may also want to include the metaspace and the compressed class space utilization. In this case you have to add a[10] and a[12] to the awk sum.