WebSphere 8.5.9 JVM fails to start with JVM Instrumentation Agent. How can I get an IBM Java 1.6 compatible version?

[gennar1]

Hi,

I have added -javaagent:/home/wasadmin/splunkagent.jar to my WAS 8.5.6 JVM and it failed to start with:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: JVMCFRE003 bad major version; class=com/splunk/javaagent/SplunkJavaAgent, offset=6
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassImpl(Native Method)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:273)
        at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:74)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:538)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:449)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$300(URLClassLoader.java:77)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader$ClassFinder.run(URLClassLoader.java:1041)
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(AccessController.java:452)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:427)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassHelper(ClassLoader.java:701)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:680)
        at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:358)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:663)
        at sun.instrument.InstrumentationImpl.loadClassAndStartAgent(InstrumentationImpl.java:292)
        at sun.instrument.InstrumentationImpl.loadClassAndCallPremain(InstrumentationImpl.java:350)

This is probably because splunkagent.jar compiled with Java 1.7 and I have to run Java 1.6 ( something that unfortunately is outside of my control). Is there any way to get IBM 1.6 compatible version?

My full java version is:

java version "1.6.0"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build pxa6460_26sr8fp7-20150708_01(SR8 FP7))
IBM J9 VM (build 2.6, JRE 1.6.0 Linux amd64-64 Compressed References 20150701_255671 (JIT enabled, AOT enabled)
J9VM - R26_Java626_SR8_20150701_0100_B255671
JIT - tr.r11_20150626_95120.01
GC - R26_Java626_SR8_20150701_0100_B255671_CMPRSS
J9CL - 20150701_255671)
JCL - 20150628_01

Thanks
Genna

[Damien_Dallimor]

The code is on github , so you can clone the repo and compile your own custom version.

[gennar1]

Hi Damien,
Thanks for your reply. That made a trick - just to note I had to comment out this line:
. It conflicts with WAS's common-logging library.
After that WAS strarted without issues.

I still don't see anything in Splunk though - I search by source="tcp:5150" and there is nothing there. I can telnet to Splunk host on that port from WAS Server . How can I tell if agent is communicating ?

[Damien_Dallimor]

Can you elaborate on your full setup and configuration , else I'm just guessing.

Also , Logging.