This page last changed on May 03, 2009 by rosie@atlassian.com.
Occasionally, JIRA may appear to 'freeze' during execution of an operation. During these times, it is helpful to retrieve a thread dump — a log containing information about currently running threads and processes within the Java Virtual Machine. Taking thread-dumps is a non-destructive process that can be run on live systems. This document describes the steps necessary to retrieve a thread dump.
The steps necessary to retrieve the thread dump are dependant on the operating system JIRA is running in — please follow the appropriate steps:
Windows Environment
JIRA running from startup.bat
- In the Command Console window where JIRA is running, open the properties dialog box by right clicking on the title bar and select "Properties".
- Select the Layout tab.
- Under Screen Buffer Size, set the Height to 3000.

- Click OK.
- With the same command console in focus, press CTRL-BREAK. This will output the thread dump to the command console.
- Scroll back in the command console until you reach the line containing "Full thread dump". A sample thread dump is available here.
- Right click the title bar and select Edit -> Mark. Highlight the entire text of the thread dump.
- Right click the title bar and select Edit -> Copy. The thread dump can then be pasted into a text file.
JIRA running as a Windows Service
- Visit http://www.adaptj.com/root/main/download and click 'Launch'.
- Click 'Run' for any security warnings.
- Select 'Process -> Thread Dump'.
- Under Process Id, select the '...' button.
- From the drop-down list, select the JIRA process. Users running JIRA Standalone should select the 'Java (Tomcat) ...' option. Users running JIRA EAR/WAR should select their application server process.
- Click 'OK' to capture the thread dump.
- Save the output to a file, e.g. 'threaddump.log'
UNIX Environment
- Identify the java process that JIRA is running in. This can be achieved by running a command similar to:The process will appear similarly as follows:
keithb 910 873 1 17:01 pts/3 00:00:18 /usr/java/jdk/bin/java -Xms128m -Xmx256m
-Xms128m -Xmx256m -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager
-Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/tmp/atlassian-jira-enterprise-3.6-standalone/common/endorsed
-classpath :
- In order to retrieve the thread dump, execute the commandwhere pid is the process id — in this case, 910.
- The thread dump is logged to the console in which JIRA was started. A sample thread dump is available here.
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