This page shows an example of using the Java JMX packages directly from Ruby, but there are two gems which exist to make using JMX must less painful. Consider using these packages before you break down and code this stuff by hand: * http://www.kenai.com/projects/jmxjr * http://github.com/jmesnil/jmx4r/ This code snippet shows how to access ActiveMQ's Dead Letter Queue (DLQ): require 'java' import java.rmi.MarshalledObject import java.rmi.registry.LocateRegistry import javax.management.ObjectName # Connect to the JNDI lookup server registry = LocateRegistry.get_registry("localhost", 1099) # List available RMI objects names = registry.list puts 'Available RMI objects:' p names.to_a puts # Fetch a remote proxy to the JMX RMI object remote = registry.lookup("jmxrmi") puts "Got remote JMX object: #{remote.inspect}" con = remote.new_client nil puts "Got connection: #{con.inspect}" # List JMX domains domains = con.get_domains nil puts "Found domains:" p domains.to_a # List available MBeans mbeans = con.query_names nil, nil, nil puts 'Available MBeans:' mbean_names = mbeans.to_a.map{|n| n.to_s}.sort puts mbean_names.join("\n") puts puts # Find the dead letter queue in ActiveMQ queue = mbean_names.find{|n| n =~ /org.apache.activemq.*Type=Queue.*Destination=ActiveMQ.DLQ/} if queue puts 'Found ActiveMQ DLQ:' p queue puts "Purging DLQ" name = ObjectName.new(queue) res = con.invoke name, 'purge', MarshalledObject.new(nil), nil, nil puts "Result from purge: #{res.inspect}" end