How to Setup Java Remote Debugging in Eclipse - Step by Step Guide

How to remote debug Java program in Eclipse

Remote debugging is not a new concept and many of you are aware of this just for those who doesn’t know what is remote debugging? It’s a way of debugging any process that could be Java or C++ running on some other location on your development machine.  Since debugging Java applications is an essential part of Java development and ability to debug your application not only saves time but also increases productivity. Local debugging is the best way to debug Java programs in my opinion and should always be preferred over remote debugging as discussed in my post How to debug Java program in Eclipse, but if local debugging is not possible and there is no way to debug your process then remote debugging Java application is the solution.  


All Major IDE like NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ allows you to remote debug Java program but I mostly use Eclipse for remote debugging Java application because it's free and standard IDE in Investment banks for Java projects. By the this is the second article on Eclipse IDE in Javarevisited after sharing Top 30 Eclipse keyboard shortcuts to improve productivity in the previous post.

Btw, if you are a beginner, I suggest you first go through a beginner course like these Eclipse Online courses to understand the core concepts of Eclipse IDE and get yourself familiar with UI and essential features. Learning plugins will be a lot easier after that.

When use Java remote debugging in Eclipse

Many of us work on a Java project which runs on the Linux operating system and we do development mostly on Windows using Eclipse IDE. Since I am working in the Investment banking and finance domain I have seen the use of the Linux server for running electronic trading applications quite a lot, which makes Java development difficult because you don't have code running on your development machine. 

Sometimes we managed to run the Java project in Eclipse IDE in windows itself which are essential for development and debugging purpose but many times it's not possible due to various reason e.g. your project depends upon some of the platform-dependent library or some Linux module whose windows version may not be available or your project is too big to run on windows and it's heavily connected to the upstream and downstream system and it's almost impossible to create the same environment in your windows machine for development. 

On such situation, my approach to work isolates the work I am doing and test that with the help of mock objects, Threads or by trying to run that module independently but this is also not the desired solution in some cases where you need to debug the Java project at run time to find out some subtle issues, This is the time to use Eclipse for remote debugging Java application.

Eclipse IDE provides us the most useful feature called "Remote debugging" by using which you can debug Java application running on remote Linux or Windows Server from your windows machine. believe me, this becomes absolutely necessary in some conditions, and knowing how to setup remote debugging and working of remote debugging in eclipse can greatly improve your productivity. In this Eclipse tutorial, I will try to explain eclipse remote debugging or how to setup remote debugging in eclipse.

Now let's see how we can set up remote debugging in Eclipse:

1) First setup your Java project in Eclipse.

2) Select your project, go to "Run" menu option and select "Debug Configurations"

Remote debugging with eclipse 1

3) This will open Debug Configuration window select "Remote Java Application" icon on the left side, Right click and say "New".

eclipse remote debugging 2

4) After clicking on New, Eclipse will create Remote Java Application configuration for your selected project. Now next step is to setup host and port for remote debugging in Eclipse.

Remote debugging in Eclipse 3

5) Now put the hostname and port on which your process is listening for the debugger in Linux machine. Check the "Allow termination of remote VM" checkbox if you would like to close java application running on Linux from eclipse.

6) Now you are all set to remote debug your Java project from Eclipse IDE but before starting to debug make sure your Java process is started with Java remote debug settings and listening on the same host and port, otherwise eclipse will not able to connect successfully.

7) To debug just click the "Debug" button in the last screen where we have set up host and port.

8) You can also debug by going to "Debug Configurations" selecting your project in "Remote Java Application” and clicking on "DEBUG".

Java remote debug setting and JVM debugs options

In order to remote debug a Java application from Eclipse, that application must be started with following JVM debug options:

java -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8001,server=y  suspend=y -jar stockTradingGUI.jar

This will start java application stockTradingGUI into debug mode using Java Debug Wire Protocol (JDWP) protocol and it will listen on port 8001 suspend=y will ensure that that application will not start running until Eclipse connects it on a specified debug port.It also important to note that application must be started before Eclipse tries to connect it otherwise Eclipse will throw an error "Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused" or "Connection refused: connect" 

Enjoy remote debugging in Eclipse J

How to fix "Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused"

"Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused"  is the most common error Java programmer face while trying to remote debug Java application, there can be multiple reasons why you are getting "Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused" error, here are some of the reason  this error occurs in Eclipse:

1) Network or Firewall issue

Since Eclipse uses TCP socket connection to connect to the remote machine, remote host must be accessible from your network and corresponding remote debug port must be open and ready to accept the connection. You can check this by using networking commands in windows and Linux like ping or telnet.

2) Java application not running on remote host

This is probably the most common reason of "Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused". If Java application is not running there will no one to accept the connection. Just restart the Java application in debug mode.

3) Incorrect host and port combination

One of the human error which causes "Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused". Some time typo on hostname or port causes Eclipse trying to connect different servers or a different port, which is an obvious reason you get this error.

4) Missing JVM debug settings

In order to accept remote connection from Eclipse your Java application must be running with correct debug settings based upon your JVM. If you are JVM is not running on debug mode you will get "Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused"

Java Remote debugging Tips  in Eclipse IDE

Here are few tips which is very useful while remote debugging any Java program into Eclipse IDE, this not only help you to avoid some common errors in Eclipse but also makes remote debugging much easier:

Tip: In JVM DEBUG parameters there is a parameter called "suspend" which takes the value as "y" or "n". so if you want to debug the process from the start set this parameter as  "suspend=y" and your Java application will wait until Eclipse remotely connects to it. Otherwise, if you want to run your program and later want eclipse to be connected that set this as "suspend=n" so your java application will run normally and after eclipse remotely connected to it, it will stop on breakpoints.

Tip: Use startup script to put JVM debug parameter and use a variable e.g. isDebugEnabled and also REMOTE_DEBUG_PORT in the shell script and export this variable when you want to remote debug your Java application. This will be very handy and will require just one-time setup work.

Tip: if you get the error "Failed to connect to remote VM. Connection refused" or "Connection refused: connect" then there might be two possibilities one your java program is not running on the remote host and other you are giving incorrect port or hostname after verifying these two things if the issue still persists then try giving the full name of the host.

Tip: You also need to ensure that you run the same code base in eclipse which is deployed on your remote machine so that what you debug and see in eclipse is true and real. you also need to ensure that your code is compiled with debug option "-g" so that eclipse can easily gather debug info e.g. information about the local variable. by default java only generate  line numbers and source file information.with  debug option -g your class file size might be more because it would contain some debug information.

Note: Recently I have wrote another article 10 tips on debugging Java Program in eclipse which is a collection of my java debugging tips and explains some advanced java debugging concept like conditional breakpoint, how to debug multithreaded programs in Java, Step filtering to avoid debugging system classes in Java, logical view to see the content of collection classes like HashMap or ArrayList in Java.

Other Java Eclipse articles you may like to explore

• 30 Useful Eclipse Shortcuts for Java Developers (list)
• How to remote debug Java application in Eclipse? (tutorial)
• 10 Eclipse debugging tips Java developer should know? (see here)
• How to attach source code for JAR file in Eclipse? (guide)
• Eclipse shortcut to print System.out.println statements? (shortcut)
• How to increase console buffer size in Eclipse? (steps)
• How to use spaces instead of tabs in Eclipse? (guide)
• How to create an executable JAR file from Eclipse? (example)
• 3 Books to Learn Eclipse IDE for Java developers (list)

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