How to have Eclipse Remote Debugger keep listening on port until a JVM finally connects?

Question

I have a complicated application with several different JVMs.

JVM 1 does about 5 minutes of work and then fires off another JVM2 to do some extra work.

I want to Debug JVM2. So I turn on a remote socket debugger on JVM2's startup script:

-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=8000

And I set up my Eclipse Remote Debug Session like this:

Connection Type: Standard (Socket Attach), Host: localhost, Port: 8000

If I wait for JVM2 to start, then launch the debugger, it works fine.

However it is REALLY hard to pay enough attention to click the debugger after 5 long minutes of waiting.

If I launch the remote debugger before JVM2 is on... I get

Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused.
Connection refused: connect

Is there someway to have the Remote Debugger continuously try to connect?

I tried to use the Eclipse Remote Debug Connection Type: Socket Listen but this blocks the port and JVM2 gives this error on startup:

FATAL ERROR in native method: JDWP No transports initialized, jvmtiError=JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113)
ERROR: transport error 202: bind failed: Address already in use ["transport.c",L41]
ERROR: JDWP Transport dt_socket failed to initialize, TRANSPORT_INIT(510) ["debugInit.c",L500]
JDWP exit error JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113): No transports initialized

How can I have the remote debugger try over and over and over again?

Answer 1

Turning comment into answer for folks that come by later:

It's possible to specify server=n in the -Xrunjdwp switch and have the debugee connect as a client to the debugger server.

To make this work, the debugger configuration should be set up with the "Socket Listen" option in eclipse like so:

Client can then be started with:

java -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=n,suspend=n,address=8000 -jar foo.jar

Or similar.