UncaughtExceptionHandler and System.exit() - java

I've written a custom UncaughtExceptionHandler that should print the exception to the console and shut down the application with a custom exit code.
The class looks like this:
public class FatalUncaughtExceptionHandler implements Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler {
#Override
public void uncaughtException(final Thread t, final Throwable e) {
System.out.println("Handled exception in " + t.getName() + ":");
e.printStackTrace();
System.exit(ExitCodes.UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION);
}
}
I set the UncaughtExceptionHandler in my Main.class like this:
Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(new FatalUncaughtExceptionHandler());
Then I generate and start 4 threads.
In one of the running threads I purposely generate a NumberFormatException using Integer.valueOf("Test") in order to test my Handler. This works fine; Here's the output:
Handled exception in WatchdogThread:
java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "Test"
at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(NumberFormatException.java:65)
at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Integer.java:580)
at java.lang.Integer.valueOf(Integer.java:766)
at com.csg.gfms.gms.ctmgate.runnable.WatchdogThread.run(WatchdogThread.java:43)
Now I have a problem. For some reason the thread in which the exception was thrown is not being shutdown by the System.exit() command. Apparently my ShutdownHook has a lock on it. (As seen in the output of jvisualvm):
"WatchdogThread" #38 prio=5 os_prio=0 tid=0x000000001efa3800 nid=0xd40 in Object.wait() [0x0000000021a5e000]
java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor)
at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)
- waiting on <0x000000076e30a7c0> (a com.csg.gfms.gms.ctmgate.runnable.CTMShutdownHook)
at java.lang.Thread.join(Thread.java:1252)
- locked <0x000000076e30a7c0> (a com.csg.gfms.gms.ctmgate.runnable.CTMShutdownHook)
at java.lang.Thread.join(Thread.java:1326)
at java.lang.ApplicationShutdownHooks.runHooks(ApplicationShutdownHooks.java:107)
at java.lang.ApplicationShutdownHooks$1.run(ApplicationShutdownHooks.java:46)
at java.lang.Shutdown.runHooks(Shutdown.java:123)
at java.lang.Shutdown.sequence(Shutdown.java:167)
at java.lang.Shutdown.exit(Shutdown.java:212)
- locked <0x00000006c9605b00> (a java.lang.Class for java.lang.Shutdown)
at java.lang.Runtime.exit(Runtime.java:109)
at java.lang.System.exit(System.java:971)
at com.csg.gfms.gms.ctmgate.handlers.FatalUncaughtExceptionHandler.uncaughtException(FatalUncaughtExceptionHandler.java:13)
at java.lang.ThreadGroup.uncaughtException(ThreadGroup.java:1057)
at java.lang.ThreadGroup.uncaughtException(ThreadGroup.java:1052)
at java.lang.Thread.dispatchUncaughtException(Thread.java:1959
Even IntelliJ tells me that the System.exit command will fail. It displays a little badge next to it saying "Method will fail" when debugging my UncaughtExceptionHandler.
This leads me to my question:
Is it not allowed to call System.exit() from an UncaughtExceptionHandler?
Is the shutdown hook initiated twice in my case?
What could be the reason for the lock on the shutdown hook?

See that com.csg.gfms stuff in the trace?
It's not java; it's you. That's your code that's blocking in another shutdown hook; one that is calling Thread.join.
Generally when running into such weirdness, if it is at all possible to make a stand-alone super simple test case, then you should do so. I have done this for you:
class Test {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(new Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler() {
public void uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e) {
System.out.println("EXITING");
System.exit(1);
}
});
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
try {
Thread.sleep(1000L);
} catch (Exception ignore) {}
throw new RuntimeException();
}
});
t.start();
}
Thread.sleep(2000L);
System.out.println("Still alive?");
}
}
When I run this, I get an arbitrary number of EXITING prints (2 to 3, it's dependent on how many cores are simultaneously working on these threads), and then the VM hard-exits. Still alive? is never printed, no locking occurs, the VM actually exits.
Thus proving that calling System.exit() from within the uncaught exception handler is not an issue.
The shutdown hook is not invoked twice; the shutdown hook is invoked due to you invoking System.exit, not because we got to the uncaught exception handler. But, if you're worried about this, hey, it's your app, print something in your shutdown hooks to be sure.
The lock issue is not on the shutdown hook. You can register any amount of shutdown hooks. It's in a shutdown hook. Specifically: somebody registered an instance of com.csg.gfms.gms.ctmgate.runnable.CTMShutdownHook, that code is joining some thread, and that thread is not shutting down, thus that hook never exits, thus System.exit is not exiting the VM. The solution is to fix CTMShutdownHook, which is broken.
Joining a thread in a shutdown hook is... well, I'll just say it bluntly: Stupid. I don't quite know what this is trying to accomplish, but the only thing I can think of is forced adherence to a bad standard. Therefore, I can foresee that you, or the author of CTMShutdownHook, first needs some introspective on how to deal with JVM shutdowns, so that they understand that the idea underlying their implementation is fundamentally misguided and needs to be rethought.
I will do that here.
There is this mindset that to 'properly' shut down a VM, one should never invoke System.exit, one should instead carefully tell all running threads to stop, and one should carefully manage the daemon flag on all threads, so that the VM will end up shutting down on its own volition because all still alive threads have the daemon flag set. The argument being that this gives each thread the chance to 'shut down nicely'.
This is bad code style.
Your app will just shut down if someone hits CTRL+C or otherwise asks the VM to exit, this will not result in a nice 'ask all threads to clean up and stop' process. In fact, your app gets zero opportunity to clean up anything if someone trips over a powercable, the computer hard-crashes, or someone terminates the app.
This leads to the following rules:
Any code that is written so that it breaks if not shut down nicely (e.g. you keep some state in memory, and upon being asked to quit, you save this state to disk; it is quite a serious bug if this state is just forgotten) is bad code. It is always possible to write code so that recovery is possible. Even extreme cases, such as filesystems, can (these days) handle just pulling the cord using e.g. journalling technology.
If you want to at least 'be nice' and try to save state or otherwise cleanup, do not wait for someone to tell your thread to 'exit nicely'. Just register a shutdown handler which does the cleanup, and assume your main thread loop will just straight up abort at some arbitrary point without any further notification. This is not actually hard to write.
Said differently: Don't ever assume your thread will be told to clean up after itself. Assume that usually any registered shutdownhandlers are invoked, but don't rely on them entirely, as in rare scenarios (power pulse, kill -9, VM core crash, memory issues, someone runs this in an IDE and just kills it, which is usually a hard-kill, the list is long) those don't run either.
By adding a shutdownhook that 'joins' a thread (joining = pause this thread until that thread exits), you've created a very silly scenario where of the 3 different ways to shut an app down:
Someone trips over a powercable or kill -9s your app: Everything dies on the spot, no cleanup possible.
CTRL+C is hit or someone calls System.exit or normal SIGKILLs your app: Everything dies on the spot, but all shutdown hooks are invoked.
(Misguided) Within the app some process starts trying to get all non-daemon threads to return, and they will presumably be doing their cleanup internally.
What 'join this thread in a shutdown hook' does is effectively downgrade that second form to the (bad) third form.
With that context, you can now fix the broken code in CTMShutdownHook, or talk to the developer of that hook and explain to them that the elegant-sounding idea of allowing all running threads to shut down nicely is in fact bad.
Then as a more general point of principle, shutdown hooks should block as little as possible and should definitely not wait for other threads to act.

Related

Why are methods after interruption of a thread not called?

I would like to shutdown a thread gracefully. However, once the shutdown is initiated the thread should perform some shutdown operation after ending usual operation.
Both threads use sleeps and/or wait and handle InterruptedException, they also work on tasks in a loop taking only a few milliseconds. So that I expected the while loop to end because Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted() becomes "true".
The problem is that with my code sometimes I get the log "SHUTDOWN" and sometimes not. Also I get "INTERRUPTED" only sometimes, which I understand of course. With another similar thread I never get the "SHUTDOWN".
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(2);
executor.execute(new Test());
Thread.sleep(10000);
executor.shutdown();
try {
if(this.executor.awaitTermination(60, TimeUnit.SECONDS)) {
this.loggerFactory.getLogger(this.getClass()).info("CLOSED (GRACEFULLY)!");
} else {
this.executor.shutdownNow();
this.loggerFactory.getLogger(this.getClass()).info("CLOSED (IMMEDIATELY)!");
}
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
this.executor.shutdownNow();
this.loggerFactory.getLogger(this.getClass()).info("CLOSED (IMMEDIATELY)!");
}
class Test implements Runnable {
private volatile boolean isRunning = true;
#Override
public void run() {
try {
while(!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
while(!this.isRunning) {
synchronized(this) {
this.wait();
}
}
// DO SOMETHING LASTING A FEW MILLISECONDS
Thread.sleep(500);
}
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
this.loggerFactory.getLogger(this.getClass()).info("INTERRUPTED!");
}
this.loggerFactory.getLogger(this.getClass()).info("SHUTDOWN!");
// DO SOME SHUTDOWN OPERATION
}
}
EDIT:
After some commentary by OP, an entirely different and much superior solution seems to be available:
Use hooks!
Java has a system to 'install' a shutdown hook. These are called when the VM shuts down... sometimes. If you get SIGTERMed (kill -9) or someone trips over a powercable, or linux kills your process due to excessive memory use, or the kernel dumps, or your VM hard crashes (for example, a core dump in native code), or the device loses power, they don't get called, of course.
But, if someone in the process runs System.exit(), or all non-daemon threads are done, or someone hits CTRL+C or sends SIGKILL (kill, not kill -9) to your process, they get run first, and only when they all finish does the java process actually end.
That sounds like a vastly superior solution here. Your shutdown hook should:
acquire the lock on some private AtomicBoolean.
set the boolean to false (the boolean indicates: May I query this sensor?)
release the lock.
reset the sensor.
return.
And all your normal operation code that reads that sensor should:
acquire a lock on the boolean.
if false, throw or otherwise abort.
perform the sensor read operation.
release the lock.
Nothing should ever touch that sensor without holding the lock (failure to do this would imply maybe messing with that sensor after you've already reset it, which would be bad).
original answer:
I would like to shutdown a thread gracefully.
Why? 'gracefully' is a very nice sounding word, but once you dig into what it means, it's just nasty things. It's a word that means: "That will cause my software to fail, possibly persistently (as in, won't start anymore without cleaning up stuff), if someone trips over a powercable or my app hard-crashes".
A much better design is to have a thread that doesn't need to be shut down. Just pull the plug on it, and all is well.
For example, old filesystems (MS-DOS and early windows age) required graceful shutdowns; failure to do so would lead to persistent issues - the system wouldn't boot at all, you bricked the box. They then had mitigation systems in place (chkdsk systems), but modern OSes are much better. Their filesystem handling setup mostly doesn't care about being 'gracefully' shut down. Just pull the plug on em, they'll be fine, that's what journals do.
So that I expected the while loop to end because Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted() becomes "true".
That's not how you're supposed to use that API.
Here's the basic gist of what the interrupted API does:
Any thread can 'raise the interrupt flag' on any other (someThread.interrupt()).
raising the flag doesn't do anything other than raise the flag, unless a method explicitly decides to look at it.
The method Thread.interrupted() is how you're supposed to read the flag out in order to act upon it, __and not Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted(). The former will check the flag and clear it. The latter merely checks the flag.
Some java methods are specced to respond to the flag being up. You recognize these methods because they throws InterruptedException. There may be more methods; for example, on most OSes, interrupting a thread currently waiting for more bytes to flow in from the network (they are blocked on a read() call on an InputStream obtained from socket.getInputStream()) WILL cause that read call to fail (with an IOException, not an InterruptedException, because read() isn't specced to throw InterruptedEx), but that's no guarantee; on some OSes, it won't, and you can't interrupted that.
The general policy is that the moment you handle an interrupted flag, you lower the flag, and java code does just that: If a method throws InterruptedEx, the flag will be cleared.
Java does not define what you should do if interrupted. Threads don't get magically interrupted; for example, when your VM shuts down (someone hits CTRL+C), that doesn't interrupt any threads whatsoever. Java will just 'pull the plug' on all threads. That's because this is better (see above). Therefore, if a thread is interrupted, that's because you wrote thread.interrupt() someplace, therefore, you decide what it means. Maybe it means 're-read a config file and restart the server listening process'. Maybe it means 'stop calculating chess moves and perform the best move found so far'. Maybe it means 'recheck for a condition'. Maybe it means 'end the thread entirely'. It's up to you. There is no standard.
Note that the various methods specced to respond to interrupt flags (such as wait(): It throws InterruptedException) all share this property: If you call them while the flag is up, they will instantly return by throwing InterruptedException, they never even begin waiting.
So, for your code, given that you wait() already, just make that while(true) and rely on the InterruptedEx.

Does java provide a clean mechanism for ensuring thread shutdown logic runs when thread dies?

I'm wondering why there seems to be no support for thread level 'shutdown hooks', which run when a specific thread terminates; not when the JVM terminates.
So lets say someone wrote a simple thread with a run method with sudo code like this (intentionally leaving out thread interrupt here for now...):
public void run(){
SeverSocket serverSocket=new ServerSocket(port);
while(!isStopRequested){
Socket socket=serverSocket.accept();
processRequest(socket);
}
runShutdownLogic();
}
public void stopServer(){
isStopRequested=false;
//interrupt thread potentially, see below
}
This thread could die in a few ways:
someone calls stopServer, followed by either...
a. the serversocket.accept accepting one last socket and returning
b. an interrupt sent to intterupt serverSocket.accept
an exception is thrown
Someone kills the thread, directly or through executor service.
The JVM goes down.
In any of these cases we want to run the shutdownLogic method, lets say it does something more then just close the seversocket, some interface with an external source that is important to do no matter how the thread shuts down.
As I understand it this is not very easy to do, in fact it seems hard enough that I feel I must be missing some basic threading feature. the 1a case is simple and works as is. 1b case works so long as the developer doesn't swallow interruptExceptions, something that is done way to often but is easy enough to avoid if you know what an interrupt exception is.
In case of an exception you need to move the shutdown method into a finally block.
In cases 3 & 4 though this gets harder. For 3 I think threads can be killed 'nicely', with an interrupt that one can catch, check to see it's a sigkill, and then force an exit of the code, but this requires even more intelligent handling of a InterruptException that most improperly swallow; plus would get ugly fast if this check has to be done in dozens of locations that can through interrupts. You can't do much for a hard kill, but no one expects proper shutdown logic for a hard kill so that's fine.
For a JVM shutdown...I don't actually know the exact method the threads are killed. I assume a sigkill is sent to the threads with a timeout before a hard kill, I'd have to research it more. If you want to be safe you can add a shutdown hook, but there is no gaurentee of order that shutdown hooks are run and trying to add shutdown hooks for each thread requires careful writing of the hooks to ensure you don't stall or stop the JVM shutdown with a deadlock or unexpected exception in the hook....
If instead of a thread like the one above I have a thread with a finite, but potentially long, processing time, without any waits, it gets even harder since I can't listen for an interrupted exception to know that I need to give up on my threads processing and run the shutdown logic immediately.
Basically, it seems like different method is needed to handle each manner a thread can execute, and needs to be done with every thread. And still in the case of high CPU threads without waits I still don't now how to gaurente a proper shutdown occurs if the thread (not the whole JVM) is killed midway through...
Is there not a simpler solution to all of this? For instance the equivalent of a thread level shutdown hook which will run when that specific thread is being killed, regardless of how it dies; even if JVM itself is not shutting down? Is there some reason a thread level shutdownhook is not possible or dangerous to support, assuming that such doesn't exist.
At least one of the reasons is that there really is not a safe and clean mechanism, which is also why Thread.stop() is deprecated. By creating a (seemingly) simple mechanism for it, people might think that it's a simple issue and use it wildly.
The same issue exists for finalizers and shutdownhooks. They're not reliable, so it's not a good idea to let developers think that it's a normal tool that they're supposed to use.
Yes, Java provides such a mechanism. Simply use a try/finally construction in your run() method, either in your Thread subclass or in your Runnable if you are using a Runnable:
public void run() {
try {
doBody()
}
finally {
doThreadShutdown()
}
}
This should take care of all of the cases that you are looking for, including normal shutdown of the virtual machine, since the virtual machine shuts down only after all nondaemon threads exit. Exceptions would be hard stop of the thread, hard kill of the virtual machine, or if the thread is a daemon thread and the virtual machine exits.

How can I immediately terminate a Thread? (Not interrupt)

This is not a question about how to cleanly terminate a thread, ie by calling interrupt on it and having the thread respond appropriately. I cannot modify code the thread is executing in any way.
I specifically want to immediately terminate a Thread, I don't care at all what state things are left in. I know something similar is possible using Thread.stop, however this actually throws a ThreadDeath exception, and for the Thread to terminate this exception cannot be caught. However the code I am dealing with catches this exception and is not rethrowing it.
Thread.destroy() seemed to be what I was looking for, however this method was never implemented. Is there any other way of achieving this?
I believe that there's no way in Java to just kill off a thread like you're describing. As you note in a comment, interrupt won't do what you want. If the thread is executing, it just sets a flag and it's up to the thread to notice it. if the thread is waiting or sleeping, it will throw an InterruptedException.
The only way I can imagine doing what you're describing is to kill the process in which the thread is running. (E.g., call System.exit(int).)
No there isn't a way. From Java Concurrency in Practice:
Since there is no preemptive way to stop a thread, they must instead
be persuaded to shut down on their own.
Interrupting a thread is not the cleaner way as you said. Clean ways could be:
ExecutorService.shutdown()
Future.cancel()
Poison Pills
You aren't meant to submit tasks to threads that take ages to be done. You would rather divide them into smaller tasks and send a poison pill to cancel the bigger task. If there is not a way to do that, then spawn/fork a process and kill it if you want to cancel the task.
If you don't trust the thread in question to the point that you need to kill it, you would probably be better off running it in a separate process, and kill the process instead.
Anyway, the following code might work if you are ok with the deprecated Thread methods:
while (theThread.isAlive()) {
theThread.stop();
}
Depending on how badly the thread is trying to surviveā€¦
You might want to run this code in several threads or repeat the stop() call if that's not enough. However, I managed to kill the following thread with this code:
final Thread iWontDie = new Thread(() -> {
int i = 0;
while (true) {
try {
System.out.println("I'm still alive! " + ++i);
} catch (Throwable t) {
// eat t
}
}
});
iWontDie.start();
If you are on Java 7 or earlier, you could use the overloaded stop(Throwable obj) method to throw something besides a ThreadDeath error:
Forces the thread to stop executing. If the argument obj is null, a NullPointerException is thrown (in the current thread). The thread represented by this thread is forced to stop whatever it is doing abnormally and to throw the Throwable object obj as an exception. This is an unusual action to take; normally, the stop method that takes no arguments should be used.
This method, like the parameterless version, is deprecated, so just keep that in mind.

Monitor thread status

So I have this very relevant thread I start when the program starts.
The thread is listening to events coming from a bigger system as the main thread does other stuff.
The thread should never stop working and if it does, it should be recreated and started.
I think I know multiple ways to achieve this, but I'd like to know your opinion on some things :
Am I just striving for nothing? I mean, if I ideally try-catch all the code that can go wrong, will the thread ever betray me for no obvious reason?
What's the best practice to do what I stated? Periodically check the thread health with another thread and a ScheduledExecutor? Implement some kind of observable-observer pattern?
You can create the ExecutorService which is listening to the events via Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor().
In that case You don't have to take a look at the thread if it is healthy, the ExecutorService takes care of that. The SingleThreadExecutor is responsible that only one Task (Runnable or Callable) is running at one time.
If you are checking using normal Java provided methods to view the thread state correctly, you should not have any errors. In the case that a checked exception is thrown or the thread exits for some weird reason, a try-finally block should be sufficient to start a new thread (also ensure it is non-daemon). You could use a while loop with a periodic pause, preferably using a thread scheduling mechanism such as timed wait(...), or timed LockSupport#park(...). You can also sleep the thread as well.
The thread should never stop working and if it does,...
OK, so write it so that it will never stop working.
public void run() {
while (true) {
try {
Message message = receiveNextMessage();
handleMessage(message);
} catch (Exception ex) {
LOGGER.error(ex);
if (somethingTrulyHorribleHasHappened(ex)) {
Runtime.getRuntime().exit(1);
} else {
maybeResetSomethingThatNeedsToBeReset();
}
}
}
}
This is a somewhat pointless and futile exercise. An app-lifetime thread should be debugged and made to not stop. The main thread of your app lasts for the process lifetime and any other threads should be designed, tested and debugged to the same standard.
What would happen if the thread that stopped had corrupted data in other threads when it crashed? If you just restarted it somehow, the data corruption may well make the situation worse.

java: Stop the Singleton thread

I have a class XYZ which extends Thread and it is also a singleton (Yes. My application needs that).
In the run method, I have something like this:
public void run() {
service.start();
}
The time it takes for service.start() is huge.
Also, my application will not always need the thread to be run but can't decide in advance so while launching the application I am starting this thread.
Now, when application doesn't need the thread, it gets completed very quickly and all I need to do is wait for thread to die.
I tried to use stop() method but came to know that it is deprecated.
See this article for alternatives to calling stop()
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/misc/threadPrimitiveDeprecation.html
stop has been deprecated a long time ago and should not be used. Thread termination is a cooperative process in Java (i.e. the interrupted code must do something when asked to stop, not the interrupting code) - one way is to call thread.interrupt() on the thread you need to interrupt.
You then need to catch the generated interrupted exception in the running thread or check the interrupted status regularly. Once the running thread detects that is should stop what it's doing, you can then run any cleanup tasks as required and exit whatever you were doing.
Signal your thread to do it's cleanup stuff, which you said is fast anyway, then just do a Thread.join.
Your question is highly dependant on exactly what is going on in service.start(). If it's opening external resources, then naturally you can't just barge in and kill the thread without proper cleanup. The start procedure will need to be coded explicitly for interruptibility with proper cleanup.

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