hprof-slurp

hprof-slurp is a specialized JVM and Android heap dump analyzer.

It is named after the hprof format which is used by the JDK to encode heap dumps.

The design of this tool is described in details in the following blog articles series.

Motivation

The underlying motivation is to enable the analysis of huge heap dumps which are much larger than the amount of RAM available on the host system.

hprof-slurp processes dump files in a streaming fashion in a single pass without storing intermediary results on the host.

This approach makes it possible to provide an extremely fast overview of dump files without the need to spin up an expensive beefy instance.

However, it does not replace tools like Eclipse Mat and VisualVM which provide more advanced features at a different cost.

The reported sizes are shallow: the footprint of each object itself (its header and fields), not the objects it transitively references. Computing retained sizes would require building the full reference graph, which is out of scope for the single-pass design.

Features

supports the JAVA PROFILE 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 formats — 32-bit and
64-bit, including Android ART/Dalvik dumps.
displays top n raw shallow heap classes found in the dump.
displays number of instances per class.
displays largest instance size per class.
displays threads stack traces.
lists all Strings found.
outputs results as JSON.

Limitations

Reports shallow sizes only (see Motivation). Retained
sizes, dominator trees and reference chains require a full reference graph,
which the single-pass design does not build.

Usage

./hprof-slurp --help
JVM heap dump hprof file analyzer

Usage: hprof-slurp [OPTIONS] <FILE>

Arguments:
  <FILE>  binary hprof input file

Options:
  -t, --top <top>        the top results to display [default: 20]
  -d, --debug            debug info
  -l, --list-strings     list all Strings found
      --json             additional JSON output in file
  -o, --output <output>  output file path for the JSON result (default: hprof-slurp-<timestamp>.json)
  -h, --help             Print help
  -V, --version          Print version

Example table

bash
./hprof-slurp "test-heap-dumps/hprof-64.bin"

Found a total of 2.51MiB of raw shallow heap objects in the dump.

Top 20 raw shallow heap classes:

+------------+-----------+-------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Total size | Instances |     Largest | Class name                                  |
+------------+-----------+-------------+---------------------------------------------+
|    1.99MiB |       436 |   634.78KiB | int[]                                       |
|  194.89KiB |      1991 |    16.02KiB | char[]                                      |
|   85.23KiB |       443 |     8.02KiB | byte[]                                      |
|   47.38KiB |      1516 |  32.00bytes | java.lang.String                            |
|   45.42KiB |       560 |     8.02KiB | java.lang.Object[]                          |
|   14.77KiB |       378 |  40.00bytes | java.util.LinkedList$Node                   |
|   14.77KiB |       126 | 120.00bytes | java.lang.reflect.Field                     |
|    9.94KiB |       212 |  48.00bytes | java.util.HashMap$Node                      |
|    8.91KiB |       190 |  48.00bytes | java.util.LinkedList                        |
|    6.05KiB |       258 |  24.00bytes | java.lang.Integer                           |
|    5.91KiB |        18 |     2.02KiB | java.util.HashMap$Node[]                    |
|    5.44KiB |       116 |  48.00bytes | java.util.Hashtable$Entry                   |
|    5.36KiB |        98 |  56.00bytes | java.lang.ref.SoftReference                 |
|    4.69KiB |       150 |  32.00bytes | java.lang.StringBuilder                     |
|    3.50KiB |        32 | 112.00bytes | java.net.URL                                |
|    3.42KiB |        73 |  48.00bytes | java.io.File                                |
|    3.17KiB |        12 | 776.00bytes | java.util.Hashtable$Entry[]                 |
|    3.13KiB |        56 | 144.00bytes | java.lang.String[]                          |
|    2.95KiB |        63 |  48.00bytes | java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap$Node |
|    2.50KiB |        40 |  64.00bytes | java.lang.ref.Finalizer                     |
+------------+-----------+-------------+---------------------------------------------+

Diff two dumps

Compare two dumps of the same process to find the classes whose footprint grew between the captures.

bash
./hprof-slurp diff "before.hprof" "after.hprof" --top 3

Heap diff of raw shallow sizes:
  from: before.hprof (137.98KiB)
  to:   after.hprof (2.51MiB)
  net:  +2.37MiB

Top 3 of 282 class deltas (by shallow size growth):

      Δ size  Δ instances        size (from → to) instances (from → to)  Class name
    +1.99MiB          432       1.14KiB → 1.99MiB               4 → 436  int[]
  +130.56KiB         1158    64.33KiB → 194.89KiB            833 → 1991  char[]
   +60.84KiB          434     24.39KiB → 85.23KiB               9 → 443  byte[]

Example JSON

bash
./hprof-slurp "test-heap-dumps/hprof-64.bin" --top 3 --json

The output file name is printed on completion (it includes a timestamp, e.g. hprof-slurp-1780171439141.json).

bash
jq . hprof-slurp-<timestamp>.json

JSON
{
  "schema_version": 1,
  "tool": {
    "name": "hprof-slurp",
    "version": "0.9.0"
  },
  "dump": {
    "file": "test-heap-dumps/hprof-64.bin",
    "file_size_bytes": 3214090,
    "format": "JAVA PROFILE 1.0.1",
    "id_size_bytes": 8,
    "captured_at_epoch_millis": 1515934059480,
    "captured_at_utc": "2018-01-14 12:47:39 UTC"
  },
  "heap": {
    "total_shallow_bytes": 2628000,
    "class_count": 233,
    "top_allocated_classes": [
      {
        "class_name": "int[]",
        "instance_count": 436,
        "largest_allocation_bytes": 650016,
        "allocation_size_bytes": 2089368
      },
      {
        "class_name": "char[]",
        "instance_count": 1991,
        "largest_allocation_bytes": 16400,
        "allocation_size_bytes": 199568
      },
      {
        "class_name": "byte[]",
        "instance_count": 443,
        "largest_allocation_bytes": 8208,
        "allocation_size_bytes": 87272
      }
    ],
    "top_largest_instances": [..]
  }
}

Installation

Releases

Using the provided binaries in https://github.com/agourlay/hprof-slurp/releases

Crates.io

Using Cargo via crates.io.

bash
cargo install hprof-slurp

Performance

On modern hardware hprof-slurp can process heap dump files at around 2GB/s.

To maximize performance make sure to run on a host with at least 4 cores.

Generate a heap dump

Heap dump files are sometimes generated in case of a JVM crash depending on your runtime configuration.

It can also be done manually by triggering a heap dump using jmap.

Example:

jmap -dump:format=b,file=my-hprof-file.bin <pid>

On Android, dump an app's heap with am dumpheap and pull the raw file (do not
run it through hprof-conv, which strips the ART/Dalvik extension records).

Example:

adb shell am dumpheap <pid> /data/local/tmp/my-hprof-file.bin

Prior art of HPROF parsing

Several projects have been very useful while researching and implementing this tool.
They have provided guidance and inspiration in moments of uncertainty.