Thread still runs despite catching an exception - java

I've got 5 threads; main (represents bank) and 4 other custom threads (client) that I've created. Each of the custom threads has about 6 instructions in it's run method and these instructions execute a method on a shared resource/monitor. I'll post the relevant codes to keep it short and simple. What I want to do is display a message once all threads have finished executing. One of the threads is vulnerable to deadlock in my situation and to overcome it, i force the main thread to sleep a certain amount of time to give all the threads a chance to finish their execution and once the main thread has woken up, it checks if the other threads are alive.. if yes then throw an exception using the .interrupt() method. Now what I expected to happen was that the thread that catches the interruption to go in a terminated state but weirdly it doesn't and still maintains its running state. And what I've noticed is that it continues executing the statements in its run method but after the statement that made it go into the wait state.
In the main thread I check if clientB thread is alive, if yes, throw an exception.
if(clientB.isAlive()){
clientB .interrupt();
}
ClientB's run method is a simple basic run method that calls methods from a monitor.
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println(threadName + " is in ThreadGroup: " + threadGroupName);
threadState = Student.currentThread().getState().name();
System.out.println("State of studentThread: " + threadState);
Random rnd = new Random();
try {
Code number 1
{...}
Code number 2
{...}
Code number 3
{...}
Code number 4
{...}
Code number 5
{...}
System.out.println("ClientB Terminating");
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
System.out.println("ClientB got interuppted.");
return;
}
}
As you can see, I haven't got any while loops or anything in ClientB's run method. And this is the monitor method that ClientB calls:
#Override
public synchronized void withdrawal(Transaction t) {
while (t.getAmount() > this.balance) {
try {
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
System.out.println("Withdrawal method interuppted.");
return;
}
}
{...}
notifyAll();
}
Now when I give main method 10 seconds for all the threads to complete their actions, all the other threads seem to finish within that time apart from ClientB on Code 2 of its method and after calling interrupted, I expect the thread to catch that exception and get killed but what I've noticed is that the Withdrawal method interrupted. is printed out on the console but not ClientB got interrupted. and it then goes to finish executing code 3,4,5 and then prints out ClientB Terminating and stops.. why is this?

When the exception is catched in withdrawal, it exits the method with a return, so the processing of the exception ends there.
UPDATE:
if you want to continue the processing of the InterruptedException outside of the withdrawal method, you can do this:
#Override
public synchronized void withdrawal(Transaction t) throws InterruptedException {
while (t.getAmount() > this.balance) {
wait();
}
{...}
notifyAll();
}

Yes, Maurice is right. You do not pass your exception to the calling method.
You should replace return with throw new InterruptedException(ex.getMessage());
Also if you do not use the try catch in the withdrawal method, it will also do what you intend it to do.

To catch the same exception in several places, it should be rethrown, for example:
#Override
public synchronized void withdrawal(Transaction t) throws InterruptedException {
while (t.getAmount() > this.balance) {
try {
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
System.out.println("Withdrawal method interuppted.");
throw ex;
}
}
{...}
notifyAll();
}

Related

Stopping a Thread / Threads calls interrupt on itself after crash?

I am currently running a Thread from a Service to do some background work.
Now there is the possibility that the Thread crashes or I want to
interrupt the thread from the Service. So how am I supposed to:
stop the Thread realiable, (hard)
catch exceptions and call the Service about the crash
handle InterruptedException if interrupted while sleep()
is Thread.isInterrupted a good way to detect if the Thread stopped?
What I have done so far is the following:
#Override
public void run() {
try {
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
doMyBackgroundWork();
sleep();
}
}catch(Exception e){
ExceptionHandler.logAndSendException(e);
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
if(crashedListener != null){
crashedListener.onThreadCrashed();
}
}
LOG.i("Thread stops now.");
}
private void sleep() {
try {
sleep(frequency);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
//what to do here? it can happen because I stopped it myself
}
}
So at first I am running my Thread until it gets interrupted.
If any exception occurs, I want to start a new Thread, therefore
my Service implements a listener interface and I call it, once an
Exception is thrown. I know that catching everything is discouraged,
but I need to know if the Thread stops, without polling Thread.isAlive()
all the time.
Additionally to my four questions above:
is my code reliable and does what I need?
is it ok to call interrupt on the Thread itself?
Thanks!
You are not actually interrupting your own thread because the catch block is outside of the while loop. Therefore, any exception would stop execution immediately.
Interruption is essentially just a request (usually from another thread) to stop doing what you are doing. The thread is free to ignore it and keep doing what it is doing. Normally you have to throw an exception in response to an interrupt, or stop execution some other way such as just breaking from the loop (you need this around the //what to do here? comment). It so happens that some library methods are "responsive to interruption" meaning they will throw an exception if the thread is ever interrupted, such as Thread.sleep(), which you will most likely have in your sleep call.
I recommend picking Java Concurrency In Practice. Among the excellent concurrency material, there is a chapter on interrupts which is very helpful.
EDIT:
I would remove the code where you interrupt your own thread. You will also need to rethrow the InterruptedException as a runtime exception to get out of the execution loop. Usually people will create a new Exception that extends RuntimeException that is something like MyInterruptedException. You can then add it to the catch block around your loop so that you know when the thread was interrupted vs execution failed.
As a general example you can do something like this:
public void run() {
try {
while (true) {
// check for interrupts in the loop, or somewhere in the work method
if (Thread.interrupted()) {
throw new MyInterruptedException("Important thread interrupted.");
}
doMyBackgroundWork();
sleep();
}
}
catch(Exception e){
ExceptionHandler.logAndSendException(e);
if(crashedListener != null){
crashedListener.onThreadCrashed();
}
}
catch(MyInterruptedException i) {
LOG.i("Execution stopping because of interrupt.");
}
}
private void sleep() {
try {
sleep(frequency);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
throw new MyInterrptedException(e);
}
}
we have a nice and effective method called stop()(Thread.stop(void):void) which is deprecated, but it works and it's lovely.
Note that stop() throws ThreadDeath at the target thread which is not an exception(and it could any other throwable too), but an Error, so your code will not catch any signal about this.
public void run() {
try {
while (<<using_a_volatile_bool_type_is_better>>) {
...
}
}catch(Throwable t){/**/}/*use throwable instead of exception.*/}
}
Beside dear friend stop() we also have pause() method too, and it really pauses the target thread.
Not just one solution out there, but if it's really critical to keep thread run and run the emergency(or itself) just after any crash, you may run it as a separately app/process, plus get progress status(if any) that ensures you the target thread/app is not freezed(blocked,...)

Scenario's where a Java thread running in infinite loop for a long run be terminated by JVM

I have a Runnable thread which loops through an infinite loop. Per iteration it sleeps upto next task time and then does some task. This task is very critical hence makes the thread running it also very critical. I am not really a java thread expert so I was wondering what can be the various scenarios or possibilities where the JVM may decide to stop / terminate this thread. At the application level there is no restriction for number of running threads or so. I am concerned about how JVM would behave for a long-run.
For now everything works fine in my local test system but I could hardly test this for some hours. This is an web application running under Apache Tomcat.
The thread creation and running is simple as shown below :
Thread taskThread = new Thread(new TaskRunnable(taskObject));
taskThread.start();
Loop :
public void run()
{
for (;;)
{
long sleepTime = this.taskObject.getNextTaskTime() - System.currentTimeMillis();
if (sleepTime > 0L) {
try
{
Thread.sleep(sleepTime);
}
catch (InterruptedException localInterruptedException)
{
localInterruptedException.printStackTrace();
}
}
this.taskObject.performTask(); // also computes next task time
}
}
Or this will work fine for a long-run as long as there are no exceptions in the running thread itself..
Java does not terminate threads on it's own unless one of three things happen:
The JVM is shut down
The thread's (or it's Runnable's) run() method exits
An uncaught exception is thrown from it's (or it's Runnable's) run() method.
This thread will stay up as long as the JVM is up or it is interrupted:
public class MyLongRunningThread extends Thread {
#Override
public void run() {
while(true) {
try {
// Do stuff
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
// The thread was interrupted, which means someone wants us to stop
System.out.println("Interrupted; exiting");
return;
} catch(RuntimeException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
Note that the only way the thread will be interrupted is if you (or some framework you're using) calls it's interrupt() method.

What is wrong with it?

I've seen a lot of example for wait and notify, but still I have a problem.
public class Main(){
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
MyThread s = new MyThread();
s.start();
}
}
class MyThread extends Thread {
public void run() {
k();
}
public synchronized void k() {
System.out.println("before wait");
try {
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println("do something after wait");
}
public synchronized void m() {
for (int i=0;i<6;i++)
System.out.println(i);
notify();
}
}
The only output I get when run the program is: "before wait".
The thread you create in main invokes MyThread#k() which goes into a wait. At that point, that thread will do nothing else until it is awakened or interrupted. But the only place in your code where it could possibly be awakened is the notify in MyThread#m(). Since nothing in your program calls that method, the thread can never be awoken.
What you probably want is to add a call to s.m() right after s.start() in your main program. That way your main thread will execute the notify that's needed to wake up your thread.
Unfortunately, that's very unlikely to work. The problem is that s.start() causes your created thread to become ready to run, but it doesn't necessarily run immediately. It could well happen that your call to s.m() will complete before the created thread does anything. And then you'll still have exactly the same result as before, except that you'll see the integers 0..6 printed out before before wait. The notify will do nothing, because the child thread has not yet performed its wait. (And by the way, since both MyThread#k() and MyThread#m() are both synchronized, increasing your loop limit in MyThread#m() won't change a thing... the child thread won't be able to enter MyThread#k() while MyThread#m() is running. You could improve that by putting the notify in a sycnchronized block rather than making all of MyThread#m() synchronized.)
You can try to get around this by adding Thread.sleep(1000) before s.m() in your main program. That will almost certainly work because your main thread will yield execution, giving your JVM the opportunity to schedule the child thread for some useful work. By the time the main thread wakes out of its sleep and performs its s.m() call, the child will probably have executed its wait and you will then see your do something after wait message.
But that's still pretty crummy, because it still depends on scheduling events that you don't really have any control over. There's still no guarantee that the wait will happen before the notify.
This is why when using wait/notify you should generally arrange for there to be some sort of reliable test as to whether whatever you're waiting to be done has actually occurred. This should be a condition that, once it turns turns true, will remain true at least until the test has been subsequently performed. Then your typical wait loop looks something like this:
while (!isDone()) {
synchronized(monitorObject) {
try {
monitorObject.wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
}
Putting the whole thing in a loop takes care of premature waking, e.g. due to InterruptedException.
If the required work has already occurred by the time this code is executed, no wait occurs, and the notify executed by the code that did the work was a no-op. Otherwise, this code waits, and the code completing the work will eventually do a notify which will wake this code up as required. Of course, it's critical that, at the time the notify is performed, the wait condition (isDone() above) be true and remain true at least until tested.
Here's a corrected version of your code that incorporates a proper wait loop. If you comment out the Thread.sleep() call, you will likely not see the waiting message, because the work will complete before the wait loop even starts. With the sleep included, you'll probably see the waiting message. But either way, the program will work properly.
public static void main(String[] argv) throws Exception {
MyThread s = new MyThread();
s.start();
Thread.sleep(1000);
s.m();
}
class MyThread extends Thread {
#Override
public void run() {
k();
}
private boolean done = false;
public void k() {
System.out.println("before wait");
while (!done) {
System.out.println("waiting");
synchronized (this) {
try {
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
}
System.out.println("do something after wait");
}
public void m() {
for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
System.out.println(i);
}
synchronized (this) {
done = true;
notify();
}
}
}
The problem is, that you're not calling your m method, so notify is never called, so your thread sleeps forever. You could call it in main, after the start, using s.m():
MyThread s = new MyThread();
s.start();
s.m();
Maybe you should sleep for a little time before calling the m method, as it could run sooner than k in the thread:
s.start();
try {
Thread.sleep(200);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// nothing to do
}
s.m();
Not closely related to the question, but a throws declaration in main is not very advisable, even a generated printStackTrace is better than throwing the exception away.

Interrupting a normally running thread in java

I am trying to interrupt a normally running thread (which is not in sleep() or wait() state) .
while going through in net i got to know interrupting a normally running thread will just set the flag true and continue the process.
Code snippet is
one.java
......
......
actionperformedmethod {
if (actionCmd.equals("cancel")) {
try {
r1.stop(); // to two.java
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
....
....
}
}
}
in two.java
.....
.....
stop method() throws InterruptedException{
if(!(t.isInterrupted())){
t.interrupt();
throw new InterruptedException();
}
}
from two.java when i throw InterruptedException i can able to get the exception block at one.java , but how do i stop the thread after that because even after that thread seems to continue the normal process.
Am new to thread concepts please help..
The interrupt() method is co-operative rather than pre-emptive - the background task needs to actively check Thread.interrupted() at suitable intervals, and take action to shut itself down cleanly.
public void run() {
openSomeResources();
try {
while(notFinished) {
if(Thread.interrupted()) return;
doSomeStuff();
}
} finally {
closeTheResources();
}
}
In this example if the thread is interrupted in the middle of doSomeStuff() then it will complete the current "iteration" before responding to the interruption. Getting the correct balance between responding promptly to an interrupt on the one hand, and responding only at a safe point in the execution on the other hand, is something that is inherently specific to the particular task - there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
Note however that any blocking method that throws an InterruptedException will reset the interrupt flag when this exception is thrown. Therefore in order for this sort of checking to work you must re-interrupt yourself whenever you receive an InterruptedException
try {
Thread.sleep(3000);
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
// we were interrupted - set the flag so the next interrupted() check will
// work correctly.
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
Interrupt will not stop the thread. it just sets the flag to true to signal the thread to stop the execution soon.
to stop the execution
add global variable as
private volatile boolean exit = false;
and
you add one method in your 2nd class
public void requestExit(){
exit = true;
}
inside run () of your thread do something like this
if (exit == true){
return;
}
whenever you want to call just call this method requestExit() from your main() or wherever you want to stop
this is the best way to stop the thread.. using stop() on thread is dangerous as it does not clear any resources and its not advisable to use even by oracle hence deprecated.
let me know for any issues
Threads are only running whilst their run() method is on the stack so usually people put a while(true) inside the run method, all you need to do in you thread to stop it is to return somewhere in the run method or break the loop then as soon as the run() method is no longer running the thread has been stopped.

What are the circumstances under which a finally {} block will NOT execute?

In a Java try{} ... catch{} ... finally{} block, code within the finally{} is generally considered "guaranteed" to run regardless of what occurs in the try/catch. However, I know of at least two circumstances under which it will not execute:
If System.exit(0) is called; or,
if an Exception is thrown all the way up to the JVM and the default behavior occurs (i.e., printStackTrace() and exit)
Are there any other program behaviors that will prevent the code in a finally{} block from executing? Under what specific conditions will the code execute or not?
EDIT: As NullUserException pointed out, the second case is actually not true. I thought it was because the text in standard error printed after that in standard out, preventing the text from being seen without scrolling up. :) Apologies.
If you call System.exit() the program exits immediately without finally being called.
A JVM Crash e.g. Segmentation Fault, will also prevent finally being called. i.e. the JVM stops immediately at this point and produces a crash report.
An infinite loop would also prevent a finally being called.
The finally block is always called when a Throwable is thrown. Even if you call Thread.stop() which triggers a ThreadDeath to be thrown in the target thread. This can be caught (it's an Error) and the finally block will be called.
public static void main(String[] args) {
testOutOfMemoryError();
testThreadInterrupted();
testThreadStop();
testStackOverflow();
}
private static void testThreadStop() {
try {
try {
final Thread thread = Thread.currentThread();
new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
thread.stop();
}
}).start();
while(true)
Thread.sleep(1000);
} finally {
System.out.print("finally called after ");
}
} catch (Throwable t) {
System.out.println(t);
}
}
private static void testThreadInterrupted() {
try {
try {
final Thread thread = Thread.currentThread();
new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
thread.interrupt();
}
}).start();
while(true)
Thread.sleep(1000);
} finally {
System.out.print("finally called after ");
}
} catch (Throwable t) {
System.out.println(t);
}
}
private static void testOutOfMemoryError() {
try {
try {
List<byte[]> bytes = new ArrayList<byte[]>();
while(true)
bytes.add(new byte[8*1024*1024]);
} finally {
System.out.print("finally called after ");
}
} catch (Throwable t) {
System.out.println(t);
}
}
private static void testStackOverflow() {
try {
try {
testStackOverflow0();
} finally {
System.out.print("finally called after ");
}
} catch (Throwable t) {
System.out.println(t);
}
}
private static void testStackOverflow0() {
testStackOverflow0();
}
prints
finally called after java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
finally called after java.lang.InterruptedException: sleep interrupted
finally called after java.lang.ThreadDeath
finally called after java.lang.StackOverflowError
Note: in each case the thread kept running, even after SO, OOME, Interrupted and Thread.stop()!
Infinite loop in the try block.
Corrupt RAM? Program no longer runs as written? I've actually debugged that once on a DOS machine.
Testing the finally block in different statement in try block.
public static void main(String [] args){
try{
System.out.println("Before Statement");
/*** Statement ***/
System.out.println("After Statement");
}
catch(Exception e){
}
finally{
System.out.println("Finally is Executed");
}
Statements in which finally block is executed are following:
Thread.currentThread().interrupted();
Thread.currentThread().destroy();
Thread.currentThread().stop();
Thread.sleep(10);
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(Thread.currentThread());
If there is any exception occurred.
If there is no exception.
Statements in which finally block is not executed are following:
Thread.currentThread().suspend();
System.exit(0);
JVM crashed.
Power to CPU chip goes off.
OS kills JVM process.
Runtime.getRuntime().exit(0);
Runtime.getRuntime().halt(0);
There is a chance of partial execution when finally itself throws an exception (or leads to an error)
One could be "A finally is a part of daeomon thread it may not be executed".
The only times finally won't be called are:
if the power turns off
if you call System.exit()
if the JVM crashes first
if there is an infinite loop in the try block
if the power turns off
I think when JVM exits suddenly due to any reason, that can be a cause the control will not enter into the the finally block and never execute.
You can make it a part of Daemon Thread. You may use the method setDaemon(boolean status) which is used to mark the current thread as daemon thread or user thread and exit the JVM as and when required. This will enable you exit the JVM before finally{} is executed.
Another possible instance of a finally block never executing would be due to a design where the method returned before the try block was entered, as in the cases of some very bad code I've seen from time to time:
public ObjectOfSomeType getMeAnObjectOfSomeType() throws SomeHorrendousException {
if (checkSomeObjectState()) {
return new ObjectOfSomeType();
}
try {
// yada yada yada...
} catch (SomeHorrendousException shexc) {
// wow, do something about this horrendous exception...
} finally {
// do some really important cleanup and state invalidation stuff...
}
I know none of you would ever do this, so I hesitated to add this as a possible scenario, but thought, eh, it's Friday, what the heck ; )

Categories