How to generate a thread dump and heap dump in WebSphere 7 on UNIX/LINUX/AIX

So you want to manually invoke a heapdump?

1. SSH/Telnet to the box.
2. Get to your WebSphere 7 AppServer/bin directory, e.g. /opt/Was7/AppServer/bin.
3. Run ./wsadmin.sh -profileName myProfileName -user wasadmin -password adminpassword (substitute your WAS profile name, user and password of course).
4. This will give you a prompt where you can enter commands.
5. First, we set a substitution variable with the full name of the object representing our app server:
   set jvm [$AdminControl completeObjectName type=JVM,process=MyServerName,*]
   
6. Next, we can invoke the dumpThreads and/or generateHeapDump methods of that object:
   $AdminControl invoke $jvm dumpThreads
   $AdminControl invoke $jvm generateHeapDump
   
7. By default, the commands above will place the dump files in the root directory for your application profile, e.g. /opt/Was70/AppServer/profiles/myAppProfile.

And you are done :-)