Java agent v8.7.0

New features and improvements

• Adds support for Java 21 1546

• Add experimental config option to run the agent with unsupported java versions 1480

• Add intrinsic attribute thread.id to spans to allow for faceting queries by thread ID 1513

• Include stack traces in client spans 1507

• Adds support for getting the containerId from a docker container with Linux cgroup v2. 1529

• Add database and external span attributes to correlate to metric data in accordance with Open Telemetry specs. Certain old attributes are removed. 1525

  New attributes:

  • db.system
  • db.operation
  • db.collection
  • server.address
  • server.port

  Removed attributes:

  • component
  • peer.hostname

• Add slow transaction detection which can be configured. It is disabled by default. 1542 E.g:

  slow_transactions:
    enabled: true
    threshold: 1000 # The threshold is measured in milliseconds

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• Add instrumentation for r2dbc postgresql 0.9.2 to 0.9.x 1410

• Security Agent: Add new configuration to enable/disable low priority instrumentation security.low-priority-instrumentation.enabled for the CSEC agent. Default value is false. 1515

• Security Agent: Cassandra DB v3.0+ Support: The Security agent now supports Cassandra DB version 3.0 and above 122

• Security Agent: HttpClient v5.0+ Support: The Security agent now also supports HttpClient version 5.0 and above 122

• Security Agent: Support for std-out logging 122

• Security Agent: Added feature for Daily log rollover 122

• Security Agent: Support for logger config: log_file_count and log_limit_in_kbytes 122

• Security Agent: Relocating all our instrumentation packages under the package com.newrelic.agent.security.instrumentation.* 122

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where a ClassCircularityError was thrown by Sonarqube9.9 1522

• Fix a bug where the Java agent fails to detect spring-security-oauth2-client.jar 1462

• Fix a bug where Spring 6/ Spring Boot3 does not report underlying exception/stacktrace when a @RestControllerAdvice class is used 1538

• Fix HttpUrlConnection instrumentation so segment timing is accurate 1537

• Fixes a bug in Spring 6 instrumentation where transactions are incorrectly named in certain scenarios. 1544 Such include:

  • "built-in" controllers that don't have @RestController-like annotations, e.g. /actuator/health (see Actuator endpoints)
  • custom controllers that don't use @RestController directly (e.g. using custom annotations)
  • requests returning 401s / 404s

• Add a fix for JBoss EAP / Wildfly where if customers are using the J2EE/Jakarta Management API, the application fails to startup. 1549 This is done by adding the system property com.newrelic.jboss.jsr77.fix and setting it to true. E.g.

  -Dcom.newrelic.jboss.jsr77.fix=true

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  Customers using JBoss EAP 7.4+ or Wildfly 23+ will need to manually configure the io.undertow.servlet module and add java.management as a dependency. This translates to doing the following steps:

  1. Opening the file modules/system/layers/base/io/undertow/servlet/main/module.xml
  2. Adding the XML element <module name="java.management"/> inside the body of the <dependencies> tag

  Here is what the configured XML file may look like:

  <module name="io.undertow.servlet" xmlns="urn:jboss:module:1.9">
      <resources>
          <resource-root path="undertow-servlet-2.2.5.Final-redhat-00001.jar"/>
      </resources>
  
      <dependencies>
          <module name="javax.annotation.api"/>
          <module name="sun.jdk"/>
          <module name="javax.servlet.api"/>
          <module name="javax.servlet.jsp.api"/>
          <module name="javax.servlet.jstl.api"/>
          <module name="org.jboss.logging"/>
          <module name="io.undertow.core"/>
          <module name="org.jboss.xnio"/>
          <module name="jdk.unsupported"/>
          <module name="java.management"/>
      </dependencies>
  </module>

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• Resolve missing class exception on Scala instrumentation 1528

• Security Agent: Fixed ClassNotFoundException for IOStreamHelper class with Glassfish 122

Security

• Update agent dependency commons-codec to v1.13 1548
• Update JFR daemon to 1.11.1. This upgrade updates the underlying OkHttp dependency to version 4.12.0 1561

Deprecations

The following instrumentation modules will be removed in the next major release:

• aws-wrap-0.7.0
• java.completable-future-jdk8
• play-2.3
• spring-3.0.0
• netty-3.4
• Struts v1

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.10.0 and 7.11.0, the results printed to the console will be like:

➜ diff newrelic_7.10.0.yml newrelic_7.11.0.yml
...
107a108,119
>       # Whether the log events should include context from loggers with support for that.
>       include_context_data:
>
>         # When true, application logs will contain context data.
>         enabled: false
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should be sent to New Relic.
>         #include:
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should not be sent to New Relic.
>         #exclude:
>
125a138
>
128c141
<     enabled: false
---
>     enabled: true
...

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.11.0. If you are moving to 7.11.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.