Analyze Heap Dump with Eclipse Memory Analyzer

Ever suspect your Java app leaking memory but not sure which class it is potentially causing OOM? 

In this post, I recommend Eclipse Memory Analyzer (MAT) for developers to analyze heap dumps so you can chase down leak suspects. MAT is much easier to use and read than stand-along jhat unix command, and while monitor memory usage using VisualVM is helpful, MAT gives you specific hints about which classes may be the suspects.

Install Memory Analyzer (MAT) Plugin for Eclipse

Help > Install New Software
Search for ‘memory’
select to install both Memory Analyzer & Memory Analyzer (Charts)
Install and restart Eclipse

Open Heap Dump

To open a heap dump file (.hprof), have the file be ready (named .hprof) and switch your Eclipse to Memory Analysis perspective:

Make sure your heap dump is named with .hprof extension.
Window > Open Perspective > Other ...
Select Memory Analysis, click OK

then read a heap dump file into Eclipse,

File > Open Heap Dump ...

Increase Eclipse Memory Allocation

Optionally, if you're trying to analyze a bigger .hprof (heap dump) than your Eclipse can handle:

You need to increase the memory allocation of your Eclipse for running MAT. Since the .hprof is about 10GB in size, I took the following steps to allocate 10GB for my Eclipse on my Macbook Pro:

Highlight Eclipse/GGTS app, right-click, select Show Package Contents
Go to Contents > MacOS
Edit GGTS.ini file
Modify -Xmx768m with -Xmx 10000m
Save
Relaunch Eclipse/GGTS
Repeat Open Heap Dump steps

Open a large .hprof may take a while. In my case, it took about 30 minutes on my Macbook Pro (8GB memory) to open a 10GB .hprof. Eventually, it did come up slowly but surely, whereas my colleague used jhat on a different machine failed to read in the same .hprof after 2 hours of efforts.

Analyse Heap Dump

Right after you successfully open a .hprof heap dump file, the overview tab will show with a pie chart. You can explore by hover over the pie chart, or under the chart, click to run histogram, dominator tree, top consumers, leak suspects, top components, component report. 

Every time you run a report, a .zip file is likely to be generated along side the .hprof file. The .zip file is the HTML version of the report you can sent to someone and have them view the report using a browser.

The above retained heap column of Histogram report shows the sum of the shallow heap size of all objects that would be removed when this object is garbage collected. It shows which class is taking up the majority of the memory.

The key to understanding your retained heap, is looking at the dominator tree above. The dominator tree allows you to identify the largest memory graphs. An Object X is said to dominate an Object Y if every path from the Root to Y must pass through X.

References

• 10 Tips for using the Eclipse Memory Analyzer