| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | <html> |
| 2 | <head> |
| 3 | <title>Controlling the Embedded VM</title> |
| 4 | <link rel=stylesheet href="android.css"> |
| 5 | </head> |
| 6 | |
| 7 | <body> |
| 8 | <h1>Controlling the Embedded VM</h1> |
| 9 | |
| 10 | <ul> |
| Andy McFadden | f20c92f | 2010-02-01 14:39:21 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 11 | <li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a> (read this first!) |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 12 | <li><a href="#checkjni">Extended JNI Checks</a> |
| 13 | <li><a href="#assertions">Assertions</a> |
| 14 | <li><a href="#verifier">Bytecode Verification and Optimization</a> |
| 15 | <li><a href="#execmode">Execution Mode</a> |
| 16 | <li><a href="#dp">Deadlock Prediction</a> |
| 17 | <li><a href="#stackdump">Stack Dumps</a> |
| Andy McFadden | 0af0a8c | 2009-04-03 11:09:44 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 18 | <li><a href="#dexcheck">DEX File Checksums</a> |
| Andy McFadden | d8b5bd1 | 2010-07-15 10:30:23 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 19 | <li><a href="#general">General Flags</a> |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 20 | </ul> |
| 21 | |
| Andy McFadden | f20c92f | 2010-02-01 14:39:21 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 22 | <h2><a name="introduction">Introduction (read this first!)</a></h2> |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 23 | |
| 24 | <p>The Dalvik VM supports a variety of command-line arguments |
| 25 | (use <code>adb shell dalvikvm -help</code> to get a summary), but |
| 26 | it's not possible to pass arbitrary arguments through the |
| 27 | Android application runtime. It is, however, possible to affect the |
| 28 | VM behavior through certain system properties. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | <p>For all of the features described below, you would set the system property |
| 31 | with <code>setprop</code>, |
| 32 | issuing a shell command on the device like this: |
| 33 | <pre>adb shell setprop <name> <value></pre> |
| 34 | |
| Andy McFadden | f20c92f | 2010-02-01 14:39:21 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 35 | <p><strong>The Android runtime must be restarted before the changes will take |
| 36 | effect</strong> (<code>adb shell stop; adb shell start</code>). This is because the |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 37 | settings are processed in the "zygote" process, which starts early and stays |
| 38 | around "forever". |
| 39 | |
| Andy McFadden | f20c92f | 2010-02-01 14:39:21 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 40 | <p>You may not be able to set <code>dalvik.*</code> properties or restart |
| 41 | the system as an unprivileged user. You can use |
| Andy McFadden | c7659ec | 2009-09-18 16:14:41 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 42 | <code>adb root</code> or run the <code>su</code> command from the device |
| 43 | shell on "userdebug" builds to become root first. When in doubt, |
| 44 | <pre>adb shell getprop <name></pre> |
| 45 | will tell you if the <code>setprop</code> took. |
| 46 | |
| 47 | <p>If you don't want the property to evaporate when the device reboots, |
| 48 | add a line to <code>/data/local.prop</code> that looks like: |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 49 | <pre><name> = <value></pre> |
| 50 | |
| Andy McFadden | c7659ec | 2009-09-18 16:14:41 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 51 | <p>Such changes will survive reboots, but will be lost if the data |
| 52 | partition is wiped. (Hint: create a <code>local.prop</code> |
| Andy McFadden | f20c92f | 2010-02-01 14:39:21 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 53 | on your workstation, then <code>adb push local.prop /data</code>. Or, |
| Andy McFadden | c7659ec | 2009-09-18 16:14:41 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 54 | use one-liners like |
| 55 | <code>adb shell "echo name = value >> /data/local.prop"</code> -- note |
| 56 | the quotes are important.) |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 57 | |
| 58 | |
| 59 | <h2><a name="checkjni">Extended JNI Checks</a></h2> |
| 60 | |
| 61 | <p>JNI, the Java Native Interface, provides a way for code written in the |
| 62 | Java programming language |
| 63 | interact with native (C/C++) code. The extended JNI checks will cause |
| 64 | the system to run more slowly, but they can spot a variety of nasty bugs |
| 65 | before they have a chance to cause problems. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | <p>There are two system properties that affect this feature, which is |
| 68 | enabled with the <code>-Xcheck:jni</code> command-line argument. The |
| 69 | first is <code>ro.kernel.android.checkjni</code>. This is set by the |
| 70 | Android build system for development builds. (It may also be set by |
| 71 | the Android emulator unless the <code>-nojni</code> flag is provided on the |
| 72 | emulator command line.) Because this is an "ro." property, the value cannot |
| 73 | be changed once the device has started. |
| 74 | |
| 75 | <p>To allow toggling of the CheckJNI flag, a second |
| 76 | property, <code>dalvik.vm.checkjni</code>, is also checked. The value |
| 77 | of this overrides the value from <code>ro.kernel.android.checkjni</code>. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | <p>If neither property is defined, or <code>dalvik.vm.checkjni</code> |
| 80 | is set to <code>false</code>, the <code>-Xcheck:jni</code> flag is |
| 81 | not passed in, and JNI checks will be disabled. |
| 82 | |
| 83 | <p>To enable JNI checking: |
| 84 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.checkjni true</pre> |
| 85 | |
| 86 | <p>You can also pass JNI-checking options into the VM through a system |
| 87 | property. The value set for <code>dalvik.vm.jniopts</code> will |
| Andy McFadden | c7659ec | 2009-09-18 16:14:41 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 88 | be passed in as the <code>-Xjniopts</code> argument. For example: |
| 89 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.jniopts forcecopy</pre> |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 90 | |
| 91 | <p>For more information about JNI checks, see |
| 92 | <a href="jni-tips.html">JNI Tips</a>. |
| 93 | |
| 94 | |
| 95 | <h2><a name="assertions">Assertions</a></h2> |
| 96 | |
| 97 | <p>Dalvik VM supports the Java programming language "assert" statement. |
| 98 | By default they are off, but the <code>dalvik.vm.enableassertions</code> |
| 99 | property provides a way to set the value for a <code>-ea</code> argument. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | <p>The argument behaves the same as it does in other desktop VMs. You |
| 102 | can provide a class name, a package name (followed by "..."), or the |
| 103 | special value "all". |
| 104 | |
| 105 | <p>For example, this: |
| 106 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.enableassertions all</pre> |
| 107 | enables assertions in all non-system classes. |
| 108 | |
| 109 | <p>The system property is much more limited than the full command line. |
| 110 | It is not possible to specify more than one <code>-ea</code> entry, and there |
| 111 | is no way to specify a <code>-da</code> entry. There is presently no |
| 112 | equivalent for <code>-esa</code>/<code>-dsa</code>. |
| 113 | |
| 114 | |
| 115 | <h2><a name="verifier">Bytecode Verification and Optimization</a></h2> |
| 116 | |
| 117 | <p>The system tries to pre-verify all classes in a DEX file to reduce |
| 118 | class load overhead, and performs a series of optimizations to improve |
| 119 | runtime performance. Both of these are done by the <code>dexopt</code> |
| 120 | command, either in the build system or by the installer. On a development |
| 121 | device, <code>dexopt</code> may be run the first time a DEX file is used |
| 122 | and whenever it or one of its dependencies is updated ("just-in-time" |
| 123 | optimization and verification). |
| 124 | |
| 125 | <p>There are two command-line flags that control the just-in-time |
| 126 | verification and optimization, |
| 127 | <code>-Xverify</code> and <code>-Xdexopt</code>. The Android framework |
| 128 | configures these based on the <code>dalvik.vm.dexopt-flags</code> |
| 129 | property. |
| 130 | |
| 131 | <p>If you set: |
| 132 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.dexopt-flags v=a,o=v</pre> |
| 133 | then the framework will pass <code>-Xverify:all -Xdexopt:verified</code> |
| 134 | to the VM. This enables verification, and only optimizes classes that |
| 135 | successfully verified. This is the safest setting, and is the default. |
| 136 | <p>You could also set <code>dalvik.vm.dexopt-flags</code> to <code>v=n</code> |
| 137 | to have the framework pass <code>-Xverify:none -Xdexopt:verified</code> |
| 138 | to disable verification. (We could pass in <code>-Xdexopt:all</code> to |
| 139 | allow optimization, but that wouldn't necessarily optimize more of the |
| 140 | code, since classes that fail verification may well be skipped by the |
| 141 | optimizer for the same reasons.) Classes will not be verified by |
| 142 | <code>dexopt</code>, and unverified code will be loaded and executed. |
| 143 | |
| 144 | <p>Enabling verification will make the <code>dexopt</code> command |
| 145 | take significantly longer, because the verification process is fairly slow. |
| 146 | Once the verified and optimized DEX files have been prepared, verification |
| 147 | incurs no additional overhead except when loading classes that failed |
| 148 | to pre-verify. |
| 149 | |
| 150 | <p>If your DEX files are processed with verification disabled, and you |
| 151 | later turn the verifier on, application loading will be noticeably |
| 152 | slower (perhaps 40% or more) as classes are verified on first use. |
| 153 | |
| 154 | <p>For best results you should force a re-dexopt of all DEX files when |
| 155 | this property changes. You can do this with: |
| 156 | <pre>adb shell "rm /data/dalvik-cache/*"</pre> |
| 157 | This removes the cached versions of the DEX files. Remember to |
| 158 | stop and restart the runtime (<code>adb shell stop; adb shell start</code>). |
| 159 | |
| 160 | <p>(Previous version of the runtime supported the boolean |
| 161 | <code>dalvik.vm.verify-bytecode</code> property, but that has been |
| 162 | superceded by <code>dalvik.vm.dexopt-flags</code>.)</p> |
| 163 | |
| 164 | |
| 165 | <h2><a name="execmode">Execution Mode</a></h2> |
| 166 | |
| 167 | <p>The current implementation of the Dalvik VM includes three distinct |
| 168 | interpreter cores. These are referred to as "fast", "portable", and |
| 169 | "debug". The "fast" interpreter is optimized for the current |
| 170 | platform, and might consist of hand-optimized assembly routines. In |
| 171 | constrast, the "portable" interpreter is written in C and expected to |
| 172 | run on a broad range of platforms. The "debug" interpreter is a variant |
| 173 | of "portable" that includes support for profiling and single-stepping. |
| 174 | |
| Andy McFadden | c7659ec | 2009-09-18 16:14:41 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 175 | <p>The VM may also support just-in-time compilation. While not strictly |
| 176 | a different interpreter, the JIT compiler may be enabled or disabled |
| 177 | with the same flag. (Check the output of <code>dalvikvm -help</code> to |
| 178 | see if JIT compilation is enabled in your VM.) |
| 179 | |
| 180 | <p>The VM allows you to choose between "fast", "portable", and "jit" with an |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 181 | extended form of the <code>-Xint</code> argument. The value of this |
| 182 | argument can be set through the <code>dalvik.vm.execution-mode</code> |
| 183 | system property. |
| 184 | |
| 185 | <p>To select the "portable" interpreter, you would use: |
| 186 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.execution-mode int:portable</pre> |
| 187 | If the property is not specified, the most appropriate interpreter |
| 188 | will be selected automatically. At some point this mechanism may allow |
| 189 | selection of other modes, such as JIT compilation. |
| 190 | |
| 191 | <p>Not all platforms have an optimized implementation. In such cases, |
| 192 | the "fast" interpreter is generated as a series of C stubs, and the |
| 193 | result will be slower than the |
| 194 | "portable" version. (When we have optimized versions for all popular |
| 195 | architectures the naming convention will be more accurate.) |
| 196 | |
| 197 | <p>If profiling is enabled or a debugger is attached, the VM |
| 198 | switches to the "debug" interpreter. When profiling ends or the debugger |
| 199 | disconnects, the original interpreter is resumed. (The "debug" interpreter |
| 200 | is substantially slower, something to keep in mind when evaluating |
| 201 | profiling data.) |
| 202 | |
| Andy McFadden | 54df4ec | 2010-04-05 10:07:30 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 203 | <p>The JIT compiler can be disabled on a per-application basis by adding |
| 204 | <code>android:vmSafeMode="true"</code> in the <code>application</code> |
| 205 | tag in <code>AndroidManifest.xml</code>. This can be useful if you |
| 206 | suspect that JIT compilation is causing your application to behave |
| 207 | incorrectly. |
| 208 | |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 209 | |
| 210 | <h2><a name="dp">Deadlock Prediction</a></h2> |
| 211 | |
| 212 | <p>If the VM is built with <code>WITH_DEADLOCK_PREDICTION</code>, the deadlock |
| 213 | predictor can be enabled with the <code>-Xdeadlockpredict</code> argument. |
| 214 | (The output from <code>dalvikvm -help</code> will tell you if the VM was |
| 215 | built appropriately -- look for <code>deadlock_prediction</code> on the |
| 216 | <code>Configured with:</code> line.) |
| 217 | This feature tells the VM to keep track of the order in which object |
| 218 | monitor locks are acquired. If the program attempts to acquire a set |
| 219 | of locks in a different order from what was seen earlier, the VM logs |
| 220 | a warning and optionally throws an exception. |
| 221 | |
| Andy McFadden | 802ffdf | 2010-09-15 11:22:26 -0700 | [diff] [blame^] | 222 | <p>Valid values for the command-line argument are |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 223 | <code>off</code> to disable it (default), <code>warn</code> to log the |
| 224 | problem but continue executing, <code>err</code> to cause a |
| 225 | <code>dalvik.system.PotentialDeadlockError</code> to be thrown from the |
| 226 | <code>monitor-enter</code> instruction, and <code>abort</code> to have |
| 227 | the entire VM abort. |
| 228 | |
| 229 | <p>You will usually want to use: |
| Andy McFadden | 802ffdf | 2010-09-15 11:22:26 -0700 | [diff] [blame^] | 230 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.extra-opts -Xdeadlockpredict:err</pre> |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 231 | unless you are keeping an eye on the logs as they scroll by. |
| 232 | |
| 233 | <p>Please note that this feature is deadlock prediction, not deadlock |
| 234 | detection -- in the current implementation, the computations are performed |
| 235 | after the lock is acquired (this simplifies the code, reducing the |
| 236 | overhead added to every mutex operation). You can spot a deadlock in a |
| 237 | hung process by sending a <code>kill -3</code> and examining the stack |
| 238 | trace written to the log. |
| 239 | |
| 240 | <p>This only takes monitors into account. Native mutexes and other resources |
| 241 | can also be the cause of deadlocks, but will not be detected by this. |
| 242 | |
| 243 | |
| 244 | <h2><a name="stackdump">Stack Dumps</a></h2> |
| 245 | |
| 246 | <p>Like other desktop VMs, when the Dalvik VM receives a SIGQUIT |
| 247 | (Ctrl-\ or <code>kill -3</code>), it dumps stack traces for all threads. |
| 248 | By default this goes to the Android log, but it can also be written to a file. |
| 249 | |
| 250 | <p>The <code>dalvik.vm.stack-trace-file</code> property allows you to |
| 251 | specify the name of the file where the thread stack traces will be written. |
| 252 | The file will be created (world writable) if it doesn't exist, and the |
| 253 | new information will be appended to the end of the file. The filename |
| 254 | is passed into the VM via the <code>-Xstacktracefile</code> argument. |
| 255 | |
| 256 | <p>For example: |
| 257 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.stack-trace-file /tmp/stack-traces.txt</pre> |
| 258 | |
| 259 | <p>If the property is not defined, the VM will write the stack traces to |
| 260 | the Android log when the signal arrives. |
| 261 | |
| Andy McFadden | 0af0a8c | 2009-04-03 11:09:44 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 262 | |
| 263 | <h2><a name="dexcheck">DEX File Checksums</a></h2> |
| 264 | |
| 265 | <p>For performance reasons, the checksum on "optimized" DEX files is |
| 266 | ignored. This is usually safe, because the files are generated on the |
| 267 | device, and have access permissions that prevent modification. |
| 268 | |
| 269 | <p>If the storage on a device becomes unreliable, however, data corruption |
| 270 | can occur. This usually manifests itself as a repeatable virtual machine |
| 271 | crash. To speed diagnosis of such failures, the VM provides the |
| 272 | <code>-Xcheckdexsum</code> argument. When set, the checksums on all DEX |
| 273 | files are verified before the contents are used. |
| 274 | |
| 275 | <p>The application framework will provide this argument during VM |
| 276 | creation if the <code>dalvik.vm.check-dex-sum</code> property is enabled. |
| 277 | |
| 278 | <p>To enable extended DEX checksum verification: |
| 279 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.check-dex-sum true</pre> |
| 280 | |
| 281 | <p>Incorrect checksums will prevent the DEX data from being used, and will |
| 282 | cause errors to be written to the log file. If a device has a history of |
| 283 | problems it may be useful to add the property to |
| 284 | <code>/data/local.prop</code>. |
| 285 | |
| 286 | <p>Note also that the |
| 287 | <code>dexdump</code> tool always verifies DEX checksums, and can be used |
| 288 | to check for corruption in a large set of files. |
| 289 | |
| 290 | |
| Andy McFadden | d8b5bd1 | 2010-07-15 10:30:23 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 291 | <h2><a name="general">General Flags</a></h2> |
| 292 | |
| Andy McFadden | 802ffdf | 2010-09-15 11:22:26 -0700 | [diff] [blame^] | 293 | <p>In the "Gingerbread" release, a general mechanism for passing flags to |
| Andy McFadden | d8b5bd1 | 2010-07-15 10:30:23 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 294 | the VM was introduced: |
| 295 | |
| 296 | <pre>adb shell setprop dalvik.vm.extra-opts "flag1 flag2 ... flagN"</pre> |
| 297 | |
| 298 | <p>The flags are separated by spaces. You can specify as many as you want |
| 299 | so long as they all fit within the system property value length limit |
| 300 | (currently 92 characters). |
| 301 | |
| 302 | <p>The extra-opts flags will be added at the end of the command line, |
| 303 | which means they will override earlier settings. This can be used, for |
| 304 | example, to experiment with different values for <code>-Xmx</code> even |
| 305 | though the Android framework is setting it explicitly. |
| 306 | |
| The Android Open Source Project | f6c3871 | 2009-03-03 19:28:47 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 307 | <address>Copyright © 2008 The Android Open Source Project</address> |
| 308 | |
| 309 | </body></html> |