BSc Dissertation Project - University of Manchester - Non-intrusive JVM agents for capturing the internal state of live production applications

Overview

This project implements a non-intrusive JVM agent capable of capturing the internal state of live production applications. The agent is written in C and utilizes the Java Native Interface (JNI) to interact with the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It recursively captures the values of objects within methods on a stack trace, providing valuable debugging information without impacting application performance. [cite: 23, 24, 25, 55, 56, 57]

Key Features

• Non-intrusive: The agent operates independently of the JVM, minimizing performance overhead and avoiding any interference with the application's normal execution.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: The agent is designed to be compatible with various operating systems, including macOS, Windows, and Linux.
• Recursive Object Capture: The agent can recursively capture the values of objects on the heap, providing a comprehensive snapshot of the application's state at the time of an exception.
• Efficient Data Handling: The agent employs data compression techniques to reduce the amount of data transmitted and stored, improving efficiency and minimizing resource usage.

Technologies Used

• JNI (Java Native Interface): Enables the C agent to interact with the JVM and access its internal state.
• JVMTI (JVM Tool Interface): Provides additional capabilities for monitoring and debugging the JVM.
• Scala: Used to implement the API server, which handles data communication between the agent and the dashboard.
• Spray: A Scala library used for building RESTful APIs, facilitating communication between the agent and the dashboard.
• MongoDB: A NoSQL database used for storing the captured data.
• FuelPHP: A PHP framework used to develop the dashboard for visualizing and exploring the captured data.
• Miniz: A data compression library used to optimize data transfer and storage.
• OpenSSL: A cryptography library used for data encryption and security.

Installation and Usage

Refer to the project's README for detailed instructions on building and deploying the agent, API server, and dashboard.

Note

This implementation is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and is not intended for production use without further development and hardening.

Disclaimer

This project was developed as part of academic research. No guarantees or maintenance are provided.

Cite

@article{jniAgents,
	author = {Adrian Nenu and Caroline Jay},
	title = {{Non-intrusive JVM agents for capturing the internal state of live production applications}},
	url = {https://github.com/nenuadrian/bsc-dissertation-c-java-native-interface-agent-stack-trace-heap-capture},
	year = 2017
}