IBM WebSphere Application Server Performance Cookbook

Troubleshooting WebSphere Liberty Recipes

  1. Review all warnings and errors in messages.log (or using binaryLog if binary logging is enabled) before and during the problem. A regular expression search is " [W|E] ". One common type of warning is an FFDC warning which points to a matching file in the FFDC logs directory.
    1. If you're on Linux or use cygwin, use the following command: 
      find . -name "*messages*" -exec grep " [W|E] " {} \; | grep -v -e known_error
  2. Review all JVM messages in console.log before and during the problem. This may include things such as OutOfMemoryErrors. The filename of such artifacts includes a timestamp of the form YYYYMMDD. Review any other strange messages in console.log before and during the problem.
  3. If verbose garbage collection is enabled, review verbosegc in console.log, or any verbosegc.log files (if using -Xverbosegclog or -Xloggc) in the IBM Garbage Collection and Memory Visualizer Tool and ensure that the proportion of time in garbage collection for a relevant period before and during the problem is less than 10%.
  4. Review any javacore*.txt files in the IBM Thread and Monitor Dump Analyzer tool. Review the causes of the thread dump (e.g. user-generated, OutOfMemoryError, etc.) and review threads with large stacks and any monitor contention.
  5. Review any heapdump*.phd and core*.dmp files in the Eclipse Memory Analyzer Tool.

Additional Recipes