Signals in Java - java

I was use C++ signals
sigaction
struct sigaction sigact;
and set all attributes to use signals
now I want to use it in Java what's the equivalent in java
to the include "signal.h"
I have two threads:
one run from the beginning of the program
and the other run at the signal Alarm
I was implement the functionality in C++ using Signals as shown and now I want to implement it using java
Edited to put my Goal:
actually my Goal to run the second Thread When the signal arrives from the first thread

Thus sounds like a typical "XY-Problem".
In plain Java you have no access to OS-signal. They are platform specific and Java strifes to be platform agnostic. Also: calling Java from a signal handler with JNI might be "fun" (as explained in Dwarf Fortress).
So you have to go back to the drawing board and think about what is the problem you want to solve and stop thinking about how to solve it with signals.
That said: if you insist on signals and are not afraid to use internal stuff which might change on a whim: Take a look at sun.misc.Signal.
EDIT Now the question made it clear, that the signalling takes place within one JVM. For this signals are definitely the wrong thing in Java.
So the simplest solution is to create and start the second thread directly from within the first thread. No signalling required.
The next best solution is to code a "rendezvous point" using Object.wait() in the second thread (using any object instance but the Thread itself) and Object.notify() or notifyAll() from the first thread. Searching for these terms in a Java tutorial will bring up enough examples.

Related

Find out all java code places where a blocking operation happens

In our Netty application. We are moving all blocking calls in our code to run in a special backgroundThreadGroup.
I'd like to be able to log in production the threadName and the lineNumber of the java code that is about to execute a blocking operation. (i.e. sync File and Network IO)
That way I can grep for the logs looking at places were we might have missed to move our blocking code to the backgroundThreadGroup.
Is there a way to instrument the JVM so that it can tell me that?
Depends on what you mean by a "blocking operation".
In a broad sense, any operation that causes a voluntary context switch is blocking. Trying to do something special about them is absolutely impractical.
For example, in Java, any method containing synchronized is potentially blocking. This includes
ConcurrentHashMap.put
SecureRandom.nextInt
System.getProperty
and many more. I don't think you really want to avoid calling all these methods that look normal at a first glance.
Even simple methods without any synchronization primitives can be blocking. E.g., ByteBuffer.get may result in a page fault and a blocking read on the OS level. Furthermore, as mentioned in comments, there are JVM level blocking operations that are not under your control.
In short, it's impractical if not impossible to find all places in the code where a blocking operation happens.
If, however, you are interested in finding particular method calls that you believe are bad (like Thread.sleep and Socket.read), you can definitely do so. There is a BlockHound project specifically for this purpose. It already has a predefined list of "bad" methods, but can be customized with your own list.
There is a library called BlockHound, that will throw an exception unless you have configured BlockHound to ignore that specific blocking call
This is how you configure BlockHound for Netty: https://github.com/violetagg/netty/blob/625f9d5781ed85bfaca6fa4e826d0d46d70fdbd8/common/src/main/java/io/netty/util/internal/Hidden.java
(You can improve the above code by replacing the last line with builder.nonBlockingThreadPredicate(
p -> p.or(thread -> thread instanceof FastThreadLocalThread)); )
see https://github.com/reactor/BlockHound
see https://blog.frankel.ch/blockhound-how-it-works/
I personally used it to find all blocking call within our Netty based service.
Good Luck

Java What Happens When a Thread is Started Until It Starts Running

What is the sequence of events that occur between calling Thread.start and Thread.run being called? I ask because mostly out of curiosity, and because I can't seem to trace the native calls to find their implementation, but also to answer some questions I had about what I can expect after starting a Thread.
This question gives a good high level answer, but I'm looking for a more in-depth answer + links to source code is possible.
I'm not sure how every native method of a Java Thread is hooked up, but Java Threads use pthreads in the native layer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX_Threads
The Thread#start method in Java creates (and starts) a VMThread, which is backed by a pthread. The VMThread is backed by JNI and most of its calls wind up at vm/Thread.c (e.g. https://android.googlesource.com/platform/dalvik/+/eclair-release/vm/Thread.c).
E.g. the VMThread#create calls JNI method Dalvik_java_lang_VMThread_create and that calls the dvmCreateInterpThread function in vm/Thread.c
I hope this is a good start for you to start Googling around what exactly happens between Thread creation and its start.
Streets of Boston pointed me in the right direction, where I found https://android.googlesource.com/platform/art/+/marshmallow-release/runtime/ . I will update this answer as soon as I get a chance to read through the code and grok it.

Attaching third party thread to vm when using jni

I'm writing a Java program that uses a hardware driver written in c. This hardware driver starts a callback thread, and you can register callback functions to be called when stuff happens. How can I attach this thread to the jvm so that it can call the Java methods for these callbacks? I only have the thread id returned from the start_callbacks() function, returned as an int, but it is the pthread_t used in the call to pthread_create().
One way I found is to use pthread_once on the start of every callback function and attach the thread there. But then there is no way to detach it. I tried to use pthread_cleanup_push/pop, but they need to be called as a pair so that didn't work.
It seems to me that my only option to do this right is to attach and detach the thread at every callback call. Or rewrite the driver somewhat, which I really don't want to do.
Is there something I missed?
That's exactly what the JNI calls AttachCurrentThread() and DetachCurrentThread() are for.
The solution to you problem can be resolved with thread_local storage (C++ 11 and higher). This allows you to attach to an arbitrary thread, and then it will automatically detach when the thread exist (even when you didn't create the thread and have no control over it's life cycle).
A sample example of how to implement that in C++ can be found in my answer here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/59934966/8367574

Java - how to stop a thread running arbitrary code?

In my application which runs user submitted code[1] in separate threads, there might be some cases where the code might take very long to run or it might even have an infinite loop! In that case how do I stop that particular thread?
I'm not in control of the user code, so I cannot check for Thread.interrupted() from the inside. Nor can I use Thread.stop() carelessly. I also cannot put those code in separate processes.
So, is there anyway to handle this situation?
[1] I'm using JRuby, and the user code is in ruby.
With the constraints you've provided:
User submitted code you have no control over.
Cannot force checks for Thread.interrupted().
Cannot use Thread.stop().
Cannot put the user code in a process jail.
The answer to your question is "no, there is no way of handling this situation". You've pretty much systematically designed things so that you have zero control over untrusted third-party code. This is ... a suboptimal design.
If you want to be able to handle anything, you're going to have to relax one (or preferably more!) of the above constraints.
Edited to add:
There might be a way around this for you without forcing your clients to change code if that is a(nother) constraint. Launch the Ruby code in another process and use some form of IPC mechanism to do interaction with your main code base. To avoid forcing the Ruby code to suddenly have to be coded to use explicit IPC, drop in a set of proxy objects for your API that do the IPC behind the scenes which themselves call proxy objects in your own server. That way your client code is given the illusion of working inside your server while you jail that code in its own process (which you can ultimately kill -9 as the ultimate sanction should it come to that).
Later you're going to want to wean your clients from the illusion since IPC and native calls are very different and hiding that behind a proxy can be evil, but it's a stopgap you can use while you deprecate APIs and move your clients over to the new APIs.
I'm not sure about the Ruby angle (or of the threading angle) of things here, but if you're running user-submitted code, you had best run it in a separate process rather than in a separate thread of the same process.
Rule number one: Never trust user input. Much less if the input is code!
Cheers
Usually you have a variable to indicate to stop a thread. Some other thread then would set this variable to true. Finally you periodically check, whether the variable is set or not.
But given that you can't change user code , I am afraid there isn't a safe way of doing it.
For Running Thread Thread.Interrupt wont actually stop as sfussenegger mentioned aforth (thanks sfussenegger recollected after reading spec).
using a shared variable to signal that it should stop what it is doing. The thread should check the variable periodically,(ex : use a while loop ) and exit in an orderly manner.
private boolean isExit= false;
public void beforeExit() {
isExit= true;
}
public void run() {
while (!isExit) {
}
}

How to block child processes in java and restarting them

I have two questions:
I need to stop child processes through my main process and then start them again after something happened in my main process.have can I do that?
thanks alot.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean in the above post - I suspect they are different questions and the second is related to Glassfish, which I probably can't answer.
However, for the first I can if you mean threads rather than processes - Java has a wait/notify method pair that used in combination allow you to launch n child threads and wait for them all to complete before continuing in the main process. I think this is what you need, rather than stopping the child process from the main process - in concurrent programming this should never be done as you can't guarantee where you're up to in the child process. Have a look at: http://www.javamex.com/tutorials/synchronization_wait_notify_4.shtml
For your first part there are some classes in java.util.concurrent.locks that may help you. Have a look at LockSupport.
The answer to the first part of your question depends on whether the "processes" you are talking about are Process or Thread. But in both cases, there is no good way to cause an uncooperative process to "stop".
In the Process case, the OS may well provide support for suspending processes, but the Java Process APIs don't offer this functionality. So you'd need to resort to non-portable means (e.g. JNI/JNA) to implement this.
In the Thread case, there are methods called suspend and resume, but they should not be used because they are fundamentally unsafe. And the Javadoc says so very clearly!
So if you implement a suspend/resume mechanism, you need your processes to participate / cooperate. In the Thread case, you could implement your suspend / resume mechanism using the low-level synchronization primitives, or using something like the CyclicBarrier class.
Well it was a long time ago and I was really confused probably that forgot to look for the answers. Thanks but there actually a way to take care of the first part and the answer was Java Remote Method Invocation or simpli RMI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_remote_method_invocation
I am going to remove the second part of my question as I simply don't remember what I was on!

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