Diagnosing Jira freezes with JVM thread dumps

Owned by Mike Harrison
Last updated: Apr 06, 2020
1 min read

Jira runs on a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). If that JVM hangs or freezes, it can be difficult to diagnose what caused the problem. In order to diagnose, you will need to get a “thread dump” from your JVM while the freeze/hang is occurring.

Once you have the hang occurring again, please use the Java jstack utility via the server terminal to print a thread dump:

  1. Use Java command jps to list JVM processes, or use another method to find the process ID of the JVM running Jira

  2. Use jstack -l <pid> where <pid> is the Jira JVM process ID number

  3. If the command fails to print, use jstack -F -l <pid> to force the command

  4. Attach the output to your support case with us

The above assumes that Jira is running on a Linux server. Similar Java commands will be available for Windows servers.