Specify JVisualVM Heap Dump File Location on Linux

Question

The default location for JVisualVM's heapdump files in Linux is the /tmp/ directory. Because of my development machine's limitations, and the resource use of my application /tmp/ isn't big enough to capture the file. Is there a way to set this as a parameter in JVisualVM?

I'm looking for something like:

./jvisualvm --heaplocation /my/desired/location

I have created a symlink to the default location using the following:

ln -sf /my/desired/location/visualvm.dat

However, that is an ugly hack. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You could specify it in the file ${VISUALVM_HOME}/etc/visualvm.conf

Search for the line starting with visualvm_default_options and add the setting to the end of the line (must be between the double quotes).

visualvm_default_options="... -J-Dvisualvm.tmpdir=/where/you/want"

note the ... are a placeholder for the existing settings

The information has been taken from the property VISUALVM_TMP_DIR in the class Storage.java