skywalking-java/docs/en/setup/service-agent/java-agent/README.md

Setup java agent

1. Find agent folder in SkyWalking release package
2. Add -javaagent:/path/to/skywalking-package/agent/skywalking-agent.jar to JVM argument. And make sure to add it before the -jar argument.

New agent package looks like this：

+-- skywalking-agent
    +-- activations
         apm-toolkit-log4j-1.x-activation.jar
         apm-toolkit-log4j-2.x-activation.jar
         apm-toolkit-logback-1.x-activation.jar
         ...
    +-- config
         agent.config  
    +-- plugins
         apm-dubbo-plugin.jar
         apm-feign-default-http-9.x.jar
         apm-httpClient-4.x-plugin.jar
         .....
    skywalking-agent.jar

• Start your application.

Advanced features

• All plugins are in /plugins folder. The plugin jar is active when it is in there. Remove the plugin jar, it disabled.
• The default logging output folder is /logs.

Install javaagent FAQs

• Linux Tomcat 7, Tomcat 8
  Change the first line of tomcat/bin/catalina.sh.

CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -javaagent:/path/to/skywalking-agent/skywalking-agent.jar"; export CATALINA_OPTS

• Windows Tomcat 7, Tomcat 8
  Change the first line of tomcat/bin/catalina.bat.

set "CATALINA_OPTS=-javaagent:/path/to/skywalking-agent/skywalking-agent.jar"

• JAR file
  Add -javaagent argument to command line in which you start your app. eg:

java -javaagent:/path/to/skywalking-agent/skywalking-agent.jar -jar yourApp.jar

Supported middlewares, frameworks and libraries

See supported list.

Plugins

Java agent plugins are all pluggable. Optional plugins could be provided by source codes or in optional-plugins folder under agent. For using these plugins, you need to compile source codes by yourself, or copy the certain plugins to /plugins.

Now, we have the following known plugins.

• Trace Spring beans
• Trace Oracle and Resin
• Filter traces through custom services

Advanced Features

• Set the settings through system properties for config file override. Read setting override.
• Use gRPC TLS to link backend. See open TLS
• Monitor a big cluster by different SkyWalking services. Use Namespace to isolate the context propagation.
• Set client token if backend open token authentication.
• Application Toolkit, are a collection of libraries, provided by skywalking APM. Using them, you have a bridge between your application and skywalking APM agent.
  • If you want to use OpenTracing Java APIs, try SkyWalking OpenTracing compatible tracer. More details you could find at http://opentracing.io
  • If you want to print trace context(e.g. traceId) in your logs, choose the log frameworks, log4j, log4j2, logback
  • If you want to use annotations or SkyWalking native APIs to read context, try SkyWalking manual APIs
  • If you want to continue traces across thread manually, use across thread solution APIs.

Test

If you are interested in plugin compatible tests or agent performance, see the following reports.

• Plugin Test
• Java Agent Performance Test