Java agent release notesRSS

New features and improvements

• Supports Java 18 813
• APM logs in context. Automatic application log forwarding is now enabled by default. This version of the agent will automatically send enriched application logs to New Relic. To learn more about this feature see Java: Configure logs in context, and additional configuration options are available Java agent configuration: Config file. To learn about how to toggle log ingestion on or off by account see Disable automatic logging 817
• Added instrumentation support for the Postgres, MySQL, Oracle & MSSQL R2DBC connectors 810, 816, 829, and 828

Fixes

• Patches a security issue related to an older version of jszip that is included in the Java agent API Javadoc jar 820

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.

New features and improvements

• APM logs in context: a quick way to view logs no matter where you are in the platform
  • Adds support for logging metrics which shows the rate of log message by severity in the Logs chart in the APM Summary view. This is enabled by default in this release.
  • Adds support for forwarding application logs to New Relic. This automatically sends application logs that have been enriched to power automatic logs in context. This is disabled by default in this release. This may be on by default in a future release.
  • Adds support for enriching application logs written to disk or standard out. This can be used with another log forwarder to power logs in context if in-agent log forwarding is not desired. We recommend enabling either log forwarding or local log decorating, but not both features. This is disabled by default in this release.
  • To learn more about APM logs in context and the configuration options, please see the documentation here. 718
• Added instrumentation support for the MariaDB & H2 R2DBC connectors 799 724
• Updated agent support for Jedis 4.0.0+ 698
• Updated agent support for Cassandra dataStax 4+ 690

Fixes

• Guard against intermittent null pointer exceptions 707
• Support CSP nonce parameter for RUM header and footer 591
• Fixed an issue with auto app naming and distributed tracing transactions 566
• Increased maximum TransactionError message size 581
• The httpResponseCode, response.status and response.statusMessage transaction/span attributes are deprecated and will be removed in a future release. These have been replaced by http.statusCode and http.statusText 513:

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.

Fixes

• Changed log4j version to 2.12.4 to mitigate the security vulnerability CVE-2021-44832. 766

Mitigation for Java 7

• This release is compatible with Java 7.

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.

  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 7.7.0 and 7.8.0, the results printed to the console will be:

➜ diff newrelic_7.7.0.yml newrelic_7.8.0.yml
98c98
<     #forwarding:
---
>     forwarding:
100,101c100,101
<       # When true, application logs will be forwarded to New Relic. The default is false.
<       #enabled: false
---
>       # When true, application logs will be forwarded to New Relic. The default is true.
>       enabled: true

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.8.0. If you are moving to 7.8.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

New features and improvements

• Update to jfr-daemon 1.7.0 - fixes a memory leak condition by cleaning up copies of JFR recordings. Also updated to use version 0.13.1 of the telemetry-sdk 638
• Update HTTP response code attribute names. This will add http.statusCode and http.statusText to spans and transactions 513
• Provide support for Datastax/Cassandra WrappedStatments. 525
• Add instrumentation for gRPC 1.40.0+ 518
• Add suppressed exceptions to ThrowableError.stackTrace 405
• Add Scala instrumentation and Scala API for Monix Tasks 543
• Add instrumentation for Mongo async/reactivestreams drivers versions 3.4.x to 4.1.x 609
• Scala Cats Effect 3 - modified the API to support passing the transaction by implicit reference, rather than using ThreadLocal variables 578
• Add Instrumentation for Play WS 2.6.0 under Scala 2.13 594
• Agent optimization: change String.replaceAll in favor of Pattern.compile 592

Fixes

• Upgrade log4j-core version to 2.17.1 to address security vulnerability CVE-2021-44832 625
• Enhancements for Spring WebFlux and Reactor Netty instrumentation to address gaps in instrumentation. Also includes support for upgraded Spring Security configurations 538
• Update Async-Http-Client library version to 2.0.35 to address security vulnerability CVE-2017-14063 577
• Handle null pointer exceptions in hostname lookup 587
• Properly expire tokens used in CompletableFuture instrumentation to reduce memory usage and prevent telemetry reporting delays 634
• Add additional exception handling to catch ConnectionPoolTimeoutException errors, which may lead to an unrecoverable agent state 637
• Resolve Solr FilterCache Memory Leak 613
• Reintroduce MongoDB sync instrumentation (erroneously removed in a prior release while async support was added) 635
• Fix Sql obfuscation so that it applies correctly to queries with certain formatting 632
• Agent configuration expected_status_codes is not honored when a transaction exception is encountered 565
• Scala Cats Effect - ensure Http4s transaction tracer is created on request run. This resolves some invalid tracer states that were causing null pointer exceptions 530
• Fix Akka HTTP bindFlow 555
• Address Caffeine cache causing memory leak and OOM condition 593

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.

Fixes

• Changed log4j version to 2.12.3 to mitigate the security vulnerability CVE-2021-45105. 605

Mitigation for Java 7

• This release is compatible with Java 7.

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.

Fixes

• Upgraded log4j to 2.17.0 to mitigate the security vulnerability CVE-2021-45105. 605

Recommended Java versions

• This fix is recommended if you are running on Java 8 - 17.

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.

Fixes

• Changed log4j version to 2.12.2 to mitigate the security vulnerability CVE-2021-45046. 605

Mitigation for Java 7

• This release is compatible with Java 7.

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.

Fixes

• Upgraded log4j to 2.16.0 to mitigate the security vulnerability CVE-2021-45046. 605

Recommended Java versions

• This fix is recommended if you are running on Java 8 - 17.

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.