I have a system with multiple threads running - my main-thread just checks if there are jobs to be done and if there are some, it calls the sub-threads (notifyAll()) who will execute it. After that, the sub-threads just wait() until there are some new tasks.
Actually, the thread-system is running reliable, but after a longer runtime (3-5h), some sub-threads just die without a warning or an error. They just exit one after another - but again only with a time-range of 2-x hours. I have used jconsole to check this phenomenon, which threads are running and how they just simply disappear.
Furthermore, the main-thread is executing every second, but the sub-threads are mainly wait()ing and are not often used at all (since there are not so many tasks in the test environment).
The only reason I can think of is, that the JVM turns off the sub-threads since they are not often used enough?
I would be very thankfull for your help!
P.S. All threads are not defined as daemons and the main-thread just works fine!
edit
Thanks for your answers, but I actually use this loop.
public void addTask (Task in_task) throws InterruptedException {
synchronized (tasks) {
while (tasks.size() == MAXIMUM_NUMBER_OF_TASKS) {
tasks.wait();
}
tasks.offer(in_task);
tasks.notifyAll();
}
}
I use this loop, so that only some speciall amount of tasks will be executed.
The documentation for Object.wait() says:
As in the one argument version, interrupts and spurious wakeups are possible, and this method should always be used in a loop:
synchronized (obj) {
while (<condition does not hold>)
obj.wait();
... // Perform action appropriate to condition
}
Maybe you didn't follow this advice and got a spurious wakeup or interrupt?
Instead of writing your own multi-threaded task execution solution you could use java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor. This would probably be a good idea no matter whether you are able to fix this bug or not.
I recommend using one of the Executors for managing your tasks. There are less chances that you will lose a possible error or exception in one of you sub-threads, so it should help you debug you program. Any exception that happens in a sub-thread will be stored inside the Future object and rethrown as an ExecutionException when you call Future#get().
List<Future<Void>> taskResults = new ArrayList<Future<Void>>();
ExecutorService es = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NUMBER_OF_THREADS);
while(!finished){
//say you wait (blocking) for a new task here
Callable<Void> task = getNextTask();
//put the task into the pool
Future<Void> result = es.submit(task);
taskResults.add(result);
}
//3 hours later, set `finished` to true
//at the end check that no exceptions were thrown
for(Future<Void> result : taskResults){
try{
result.get();
}catch(ExecutionException e){
//there was an error
e.getCause().printStackTrace();
}catch(InterruptedException e){
//irrelevant
}
}
In general, stuff in the java.util.concurrent helps you write much more robust multi-threaded applications, without having to resort to Object#wait() and other concurrency primitives (unless you are learning, of course).
Try setting an uncaught exception handler on each thread.
There is a setUncaughtExceptionHandler() function on the Thread. Implement the UncaughtExceptionHandler interface and print the exception.
General idea, but don't do it with anonymous classes/methods:
thread.setUncaughtExceptionHandler(new Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler()
{
public void uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
});
Related
I have a single thread pool for task execution. As far as I know, continue working after OutOfMemoryError is occured is very dangerous. We should terminate our application if this happens. So, consider the following:
ExecutorService es = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
es.submit(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
throw new OutOfMemoryError();
}
});
es.shutdown();
es.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
System.out.println("After throwing OutOfMemoryError");
In this code, we have the task throws OutOfMemoryError. But even after throwing it continues working and prints After throwing OutOfMemoryError.
Is it safe? I mean, we may end up with data corruption... Should we be prepared to this sort of scenarios and design tasks to terminate the application if Error is thrown?
What I suggest you do
retain and check the Future returned by es.submit this is where the Error is held.
always run a task with a try { doSomething(); } catch(Throwable t) { } so you can action any Error without having to check the Future object which you might have discarded.
There are two threads in the given example -- the main thread that starts the program and a thread for executing the specified tasks. All threads are allocated their own, independent from each other, stacks. However, all threads use the same memory heap. This is why the OutOfMemoryError effects the whole program, not just a single thread.
Generally speaking, upon termination (successfully or otherwise), the task executing thread does not effect execution flow of any other thread (unless this is what it was designed for doing). That is why, the main thread in the provided example, keeps running even though the task thread got terminated.
I would highly recommend studying the Java Concurrency in Practice book to get better overall undestanding of the Java concurrency and parallelism.
I've a few questions around ExecutorService and the shutdown process.
My use case:
I use an ExecutorService to spawn a fixed number of threads whose run method look like this:
while (true) {
try {
this.currentThreadRunning = true;
processMessage();
}
catch (Throwable e) {
// Keeping the thread alive despite exceptions.
}
}
These threads run infinitely, polling for messages.
What am I trying to do?
I am polling an SQS queue for messages and processing them.
Obviously, in my case, the ExecutorService's shutdown method would not work. When shutdownNow() is called, all my threads are shutdown unceremoniously. I hate it!
Is there a way to invoke awaitTermination and verify, in my Runnable instance(in a finally block?), if shutdown has been initiated and trigger the same for the current thread?
UPDATE: I've refactored my code to perform polling and then spawning threads to process them. Thus, the Runnable instance's run method need not be an endless loop. And awaiTermination will lead to a definite closure of the threads. And to be sure, I've triggered shutdownNow after awaitTermination.
I think what you are doing is conceptually wrong.
awaitTermination is meant to wait for all threads to finish naturally and then stop the executor. When submitting a Runnable, it shouldn't have an idea of the context of it's execution, so, coupling your runnable to your executor is not a good idea IMHO.
Maybe you should look into the Future class and move your Runnable implementation there. Then you will be forced to implement a cancel(boolean) method which you might find useful.
What is exactly your use case? Maybe if you explain it, the community can point out a better suited implementation.
For infinitely running Runnables I rely on catching an InterruptedException, which will typically be thrown from my calling shutdownNow() or occasionally from calling Future#cancel(true)
while(!Thread.interrupted()) {
try {
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
break;
} catch(Throwable e) {
// Keeping the thread alive despite exception
}
}
// Thread was interrupted via shutdownNow(), cleanup resources
If I need to distinguish between a resumable interrupt and a shutdown interrupt then I share an AtomicBoolean doShutdown among my Runnables that is initialized to false and set to true if I want an InterruptedException to terminate the thread.
You have to check the interrupt status of the thread you are running in (see tutorial on interrupts here: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/concurrency/interrupt.html). Your code should be:
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
try {
this.currentThreadRunning = true;
processMessage();
}
catch (Throwable e) {
// Keeping the thread alive despite exceptions.
}
}
Note however that you do have to handle interrupts correctly in code called from your runnable. If there is anything like the following:
try {
// do something
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
// ignore
}
then this won't work. The correct way to handle InterruptedException is to call Thread.currentThread().interrupt();.
You should not call shutdownNow() But you should only call shutdown and use awaitTermination to wait for some time.
So shutdown would be something like this
Declare a volatile variable
private volatile stopThread = false;
On shutdown you call
this.stopThread = true;
executor.shutdown();
executor.awaitTermination(..
executor.shutdownNow() // in case termination takes too long
And in the thread you check for the stopThread variable. You cannot use isInterrupted here because we are not interrupting the thread. we are just waiting for the thread to exit based on this condition
if(stopThread){
// calling off all the operations and returning
}
I have written an article about shuting down the executorservice properly
http://programtalk.com/java/executorservice-not-shutting-down/
I hope this will help you.
I want to start a thread and cancel it if it doesn't finish within 5 seconds:
private final class HelloWorker implements Callable<String> {
public String call() throws Exception {
while(true) {
if (Thread.isInterrupted()) {
return null;
}
}
return performExpensiveComputation();
}
private String performExpensiveComputation() {
// some blocking expensive computation that may or may not take a very long time
}
}
private ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(threadPoolSize);
Future<String> future = executorService.submit(new HelloWorker());
try {
String s = future.get(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
} catch (TimeoutException e) {
future.cancel(true);
System.out.println("cancelled: " + future.isCancelled() + "done: " + future.isDone());
executorService.shutdown();
try {
System.out.println("try to terminate: " + executorService.awaitTermination(60, TimeUnit.SECONDS));
} catch (Exception ex) {
// ignore
}
}
However it looks like the awaitTermination returns false. Is there a way for me to check why an ExecutorService won't terminate? Can I figure out what threads are still running?
There is no safe way to stop a running thread without disturbing the stability of the rest of the process. This is why Thread#stop has been deprecated a long time ago, and why Executor Services only use the soft, cooperative Thread#interrupt mechanism.
Your thread will have to actively check if an interrupt has been requested and perform proper cleanup before ending. Alternatively, the thread will call some interruptible JDK methods, which will throw InterruptedException, which the tread will properly honor and end itself.
Why Future.cancel() doesn't work the way you think it does
Future cancel removes the task from the running queue. If your task is already running it won't stop it. So cancel() is a different concept that interrupting. As the Javadocs say:
Attempts to cancel execution of this task. This attempt will fail if
the task has already completed, has already been cancelled, or could
not be cancelled for some other reason. If successful, and this task
has not started when cancel is called, this task should never run. If
the task has already started, then the mayInterruptIfRunning parameter
determines whether the thread executing this task should be
interrupted in an attempt to stop the task.
https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/14/docs/api/java.base/java/util/concurrent/Future.html#cancel(boolean)
What you are asking is how to interrupt. Fortunately, when you call Future.cancel() it will call the interrupt method. But you'll need to allow it with the mayInterruptIfRunning flag and will need to handle interrupts correctly (see below).
Why interrupt?
Interrupting threads in Java is useful when you have a long running task that you now need to stop, or when you have a daemon that you need to turn off, and other examples.
How to interrupt
To interrupt you call interrupt() on the thread. This is a cooperative process, so your code has to be ready for it. Like this:
myThread.interrupt();
Responsible code
Your code's responsibility is to be ready for any interruptions. I'd go so far to say that whenever you have a long running task, that you insert some interrupt ready code like this:
while (... something long...) {
... do something long
if (Thread.interrupted()) {
... stop doing what I'm doing...
}
}
How to stop what I'm doing?
You have several options:
If your you are in Runnable.run() just return or break out of the loop and finish the method.
You may be in some other method deep in the code. It may make sense at that point for that method to throw InterruptedException so you would just do that (leaving the flag cleared).
But maybe deep in your code it doesn't make sense to throw InterruptedException. In that case you should throw some other exception, but before that mark your thread interrupted again so the code that catches knows that an interrupt was in progress. Here's an example:
private void someMethodDeepDown() {
while (.. long running task .. ) {
... do lots of work ...
if (Thread.interrupted()) {
// oh no! an interrupt!
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
throw new SomeOtherException();
}
}
}
Now the exception can propagate an either terminate the thread or be caught, but the receiving code hopefully notices that an interrupt is in progress.
Should I use isInterrupted() or interrupted()
You should prefer interrupted() because:
Your code should reset the interrupt flag because if you don't the thread you are using could go back to a thread pool with an interrupted state causing problems (of course, that's a bug in the thread pool code, you won't get that behavior if you use Executors.newFixedThreadPool() for example. But other threading code could have it.
As another answer stated, the clearing of the interrupted flag indicates that you've received the message and are taking action. If you leave it on true, the after a while caller can assume you won't respond to it in a timely manner.
Why interrupt() why not some other flag in my code?
Interrupt is the best mechanism for interruption because our code can be ready for it. If we find code that is just catching and ignoring the InterruptExceptions or not checking for interrupted() in its body then we can correct those mistakes and make our code always cleanly interruptible without creating arcane dependencies on non-standard mechanisms in your code.
Unfortunately Joshua Block proposed the opposite in his famous book Effective Java, Second Edition. But enabling the interrupt() method to work as intended is much better, because this code is used by the Java standard library as explained above. A custom interruption method would not be.
This IBM developerWorks article states:
“The one time it is acceptable to swallow an interrupt is when you know the thread is about to exit. This scenario only occurs when the class calling the interruptible method is part of a Thread, not a Runnable […]”.
I always implemented Runnable for my threads by now. Giving a Runnable implementation like this:
public class View() implements Runnable {
#Overload
public void run(){
Thread worker = new Thread(new Worker());
worker.start();
do{
try{
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(3);
updateView();
}catch(InterruptedException e){
worker.interrupt();
// Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
return;
}
}while(true);
}
protected void updateView(){
// …
}
}
Is it really necessary to call Thread.currentThread().interrupt(); right before my return; statement? Doesn’t return; perform a clean enaugh exit already? What’s the benefit of calling it? The article states that it should be done because otherwise “[…] code higher up on the call stack won't be able to find out about it […]”. What’s the benefit of a thread in Thread.State.TERMINATED with interrupted flag set over one without it upon application shutdown? Can you give me an example where code outside the Runnable inspects the interrupted flag for a sensible reason?
BTW, is it a better code design to extend Thread instead of implementing Runnable?
It resets the interrupt flag. This JavaSpecialists newsletter covers this confusing topic in more detail.
In my example, after I caught the InterruptedException, I used
Thread.currentThread().interrupt() to immediately interrupted the
thread again. Why is this necessary? When the exception is thrown, the
interrupted flag is cleared, so if you have nested loops, you will
cause trouble in the outer loops
So if you know that your code is not going to be used by another component, then you don't need to re-interrupt. However I really wouldn't make that minor optimisation. Who knows how your code is going to be used/reused in the future (even by copy/paste) and consequently I would reset the flag for every interrupt.
Here is an example where return it is not enough:
public void doSomething1() {
while (someCondition1()) {
synchronized {
try {
this.wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
return; // Should be Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
}
}
}
public void doSomething2() {
while (someCondition2()) {
doSomething1();
}
}
As the exception throw clears the interrupted state next time doSomething1() is executed the status is cleared and the thread does not terminates.
I prefer extending Thread because it gives you a better understanding of what the thread is doing, but it is not necessarily better code design.
As Brian stated ,it resets the interrupt flag but that doesn't say much. In your case it will do nothing and the View-Thread will keep on running.
When interrupting a Thread, the standard procedure is that the Thread should stop running. It won't do this automatically and you have to implement a way to stop it once it is interrupted.
Using the built-in functionality there are two options:
Have the main loop inside the try-block for the InterruptedException. This way, when it is interrupted you you will be thrown out of the loop and the method will exit.
The above can be bad if you have to save the state as it may corrupt the state. As an alternative, you can set the interrupted-flag (as said when it's thrown. re-interrupt it Interrupt the Thread
Either way, you have to check that the Thread is interrupted in your while-loop (with !Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()-statement in the while-loop) or it may/will not exit. You're not fulfilling one of the first options and neither checking the flag, so your View-thread will keep on running after being interrupted.
Is it really necessary to call Thread.currentThread().interrupt(); right before my return; statement?
As a point, I always do. We all copy-and-paste code and swallowing the interrupt is such a serious problem that I as a rule always do it, even if the thread is about to die.
Doesn’t return; perform a clean enough exit already?
If you are sure that it is the last return before the run() method completes and the thread exits, then yes, it not technically necessary. But see above. For posterity, return; doesn't do anything with the interrupt flag.
The question is whether your View class has been wrapped. Are you sure that when you return you are exiting the Thread. Maybe someone is delegating to it. AOP may be in place to do some sort of instrumentation.
What’s the benefit of calling it? The article states that it should be done because otherwise “[…] code higher up on the call stack won't be able to find out about it […]”.
In general, it is important to not swallow the interrupt when your code is called by some sort of wrapping code (delegation, AOP, etc) which needs the interrupt flag. If you are swallowing it, the wrapper won't be able to use it. But in this case, there is no benefit.
What’s the benefit of a thread in Thread.State.TERMINATED with interrupted flag set over one without it upon application shutdown?
Nothing. Once the thread exits the interrupt state is worthless. And actually, it looks like the interrupt state isn't even persisted after the thread is dead.
Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
try {
Thread.sleep(100);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
System.out.println("caught");
}
}
});
thread.start();
thread.interrupt();
System.out.println(thread.isInterrupted());
thread.join();
System.out.println(thread.isInterrupted());
Prints:
true
caught
false
Can you give me an example where code outside the Runnable inspects the interrupted flag for a sensible reason?
I can't. There is no code outside of the thread's run() method unless someone is wrapping your runnable in other code without your knowledge.
This may happen if you are using an ExecutorService but in that case the thread's interrupt status is specifically cleared with a wt.isInterrupted() before the job is run.
So again, the reason is to do is is because it's a good pattern and that's what's important in software engineering.
I'm trying to write an integration test that causes an InterruptedException to be raised from the production code:
#Test
public void test() {
productionObject = new ProductionObject(
com.google.common.util.concurrent.MoreExecutors.sameThreadExecutor());
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
assertThat(productionObject.execute(), equalTo(defaultResponse));
}
Inside productionObject's implementation:
try {
for (Future<T> future : executorService.invokeAll(tasks))) {
results.add(future.get());
}
return results;
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt(); // preserve interrupt flag
return defaultResponse;
}
Inside AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquireSharedInterruptibly() I see:
if (Thread.interrupted())
throw new InterruptedException();
So I would expect this test to pass consistently.
I've seen this fail in our build server (results are returned rather than defaultResponse). I've been unable to reproduce the failure locally, running the test in a while (true) loop, and simulating higher load by running glxgears with software rendering ;-) Can anyone spot my mistake, give me some suggestions on where to look, or suggest tools that could help me?
Strange. I read the code the same way you do. I see:
FutureTask.get() calls Sync.get(). I assume we are dealing with FutureTask here.
Sync.get() calls Sync.innerGet()
Sync.innerGet() calls acquireSharedInterruptibly(0);
Which has the code right off:
if (Thread.interrupted())
throw new InterruptedException();
I would think that this would always throw. Maybe there is some sort of race condition so the thread does not yet know that it has been interrupted? Have you tried to sleep for 100ms after you interrupt the thread?
I just ran the following test on my multi-cpu Mac and it never fails so it does not look like a race condition -- at least with my architecture and JRE version 1.6.0_41.
for (long i = 0; i < 10000000; i++) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
assertTrue(Thread.interrupted());
}
Using sameThreadExecutor() in this context might actually be contra-productive since the interrupt might than occur in one of the tasks. Otherwise the code looks fine. Try using kicking off actual other threads and let one of the tasks wait long enough for your interrupt.
I've "fixed" this by interrupting the thread from within the Callable rather than from the test method itself. This makes the interruption occur closer to call to acquireSharedInterruptibly().
I can only imagine that somewhere on the code path the interrupt flag is sometimes being cleared (perhaps by JUnit or Maven surefire, which are executing test methods in parallel). I've probably only reduced the likelihood of the race condition, rather than fixing it :-/