Gracefully shutdown a program with multiple threads having infinite while loop - java

I have a program which creates 10 threads, and each thread has an infinitely running while loop.
I need help to efficiently implement a Shutdown hook which can effectively STOP all the threads. Since I want to do a graceful shutdown each Thread should finish as soon as it finds the stop flag turned to TRUE.
public class SampleGSH implements Runnable{
private static boolean stop = false;
public static void main(String[] args) {
for(int i = 0; i < 10;i++) {
Thread t = new Thread(new SampleGSH(), "name"+i);
t.start();
}
}
#Override
public void run() {
Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(new Thread("shutdown thread") {
public void run()
{
System.out.println("*******");
synchronized (this)
{
System.out.println("Turning switch off");
stop = true;
}
}
});
synchronized (this) {
while(!stop)
{
//Some logic which should not be killed abruptly once it starts running, a graceful shut down will not allow this code to start
}
}
}
}
Any help will be truly appreciated.

I need help to efficiently implement a Shutdown hook which can effectively STOP all the threads.
If you have any fields that are shared between multiple threads, they need to be synchronized. In this case your stop should be volatile. Without this, there is nothing that ensures that the threads will see the value of stop change to true. See this tutorial for information about atomic access.
See: Using boolean var for stopping threads
Couple other comments:
If you are starting a number of threads, you should consider using an ExecutorService
Your while loop is inside of a synchronized block. This does nothing and the stop field will not get memory synchronized since it gets updated externally while inside of the block.
Another way to stop a thread would be to interrupt() it. See this tutorial.
while (!thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
...
}
...
t.interrupt();

Instead of a single static stop boolean, you could give every thread its own stop boolean. Then store all thread objects when creating them and set their stop boolean to true in the shutdown hook thread (which would be hooked in the main method).
Something like this:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class SampleGSH extends Thread {
public boolean stop = false;
private static List<SampleGSH> threads = null;
public static void main(String[] args) {
threads = new ArrayList<SampleGSH>();
int numThreads = 10;
for (int i = 0; i < numThreads; i++) {
SampleGSH t = new SampleGSH();
threads.add(t);
t.start();
}
Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(new Thread("shutdown thread") {
public void run() {
System.out.println("*******");
for (SampleGSH t : threads) {
t.stop = true;
}
}
});
}
#Override
public void run() {
{
while (!stop) {
// Some logic which should not be killed abruptly once it starts
// running, a graceful shut down will not allow this code to
// start
}
}
}
}

Forget that addShutdownHook guff ... keep it simple ...
Make the static stop variable volatile ...
then add this method to SampleGSH ...
public void shutdown() {
stop = true;
}
then call it when you want to stop the threads!

Related

How to signal a thread in java?

I have a Process running which creates a Thread object and runs it. Now based on some events in Process, I want Thread to react accordingly. More precisely if commonVar becomes true, then thread B should pause in while loop. Then when commonVar becomes false, then thread B should start from beginning of run() method.
Note that the thread B doesn't write to commonVar. It just reads it.
public class B implements runnable
{
Boolean commanVar;
public B(boolean commanVar) {
this.commonVar = commonVar;
}
public void run()
{
while(true) {
// do some processing
}
}
}
public class A
{
public static void main(String[] args) {
Boolean commonVar = false;
Thread threadB = new Thread(new ClassB(commonVar));
threadB.start();
// some processing will happen and because of that commonVar will change.
}
}
Do not stop threads. Instead, issue tasks (via BlockingQueue) or signals (by Semaphore), and let them run while they have input, and hang when input is exhausted.

What did I do wrong in the following piece of code that caused threads to never terminate?

I have the following piece of code which I expected to print "DONE" at the end. But when I ran, "DONE" was never printed and the JVM in fact never terminated.
What did I do wrong?
// File: Simple.java
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
public class Simple {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
doTest(3);
}
private static void doTest(final int times) {
ScheduledExecutorService tp = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(times);
Thread[] runnables = new Thread[times];
for (int i = 0; i < runnables.length; ++i) {
runnables[i] = new Thread(new MyRunnable());
}
// schedule for them all to run
for (Thread t : runnables) {
tp.schedule(t, 1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
try {
tp.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
System.out.println("DONE!");
}catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
static class MyRunnable implements Runnable {
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("hello world");
}
}
}
There are two things that you're doing wrong here.
First off, if you're using an ExecutorService, you shouldn't then also be creating your own threads. Just submit Runnables to the executor directly - the executor service has its own collection of threads, and runs anything you submit on its own threads, so the threads you created won't even get started.
Second, if you're done with an ExecutorService, and are going to wait until it's terminated, you need to call shutdown() on the executor service after you submit your last job.
Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(times) uses Executors.defaultThreadFactory() for its ThreadFactory.
Here is the documentation
When a Java Virtual Machine starts up, there is usually a single
non-daemon thread (which typically calls the method named main of some
designated class). The Java Virtual Machine continues to execute
threads until either of the following occurs:
The exit method of class Runtime has been called and the security manager has permitted the exit operation to take place.
All threads that are not daemon threads have died, either by returning from the call to the run method or by throwing an exception
that propagates beyond the run method.
So, here is what you had; but I changed 3 things.
Added the shutdown hook
Made the schedule delayed by an extra second for each to demo that the shutdown is being called even before some of the threads are being called to run by the scheduler.
Lastly, you were telling it to wait forever using the Long.MAX. But I think you were doing it because the shutdown feels like it would shutdown now. But it won't.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
doTest(3);
}
private static void doTest(final int times) {
ScheduledExecutorService tp = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(times);
Thread[] runnables = new Thread[times];
for (int i = 0; i < runnables.length; ++i) {
runnables[i] = new Thread(new MyRunnable());
}
// schedule for them all to run
int i = 1;
for (Thread t : runnables) {
tp.schedule(t, i++, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
System.out.println("Calling shutdown");
tp.shutdown();
}
static class MyRunnable implements Runnable {
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("hello world");
}
}
Hope that answers your question. Now, you're kinda duplicating stuff.
If you are going to use the executerservice, you should just tell it to schedule stuff for you.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
doTest(3);
}
private static void doTest(final int times) {
ScheduledExecutorService tp = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(times);
for (int i = 0; i < times; ++i) {
tp.schedule(new MyRunnable(), 1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
System.out.println("Calling shutdown");
tp.shutdown();
}
static class MyRunnable implements Runnable {
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("hello world");
}
}
You forgot to shutdown your ExecutorService:
tp.shutdown(); // <-- add this
tp.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
Also I should mention that creating Threads to use them as Runnables is not only meaningless, but can be misleading as well. You should really use Runnable instead of Thread for runnables variable.
Runnable[] runnables = new Runnable[times];

How do I pause Threads properly with wait() and notify()

I want to have a class that starts a Thread and provides methods to pause and continue this Thread. My first approach was to have flag, which loops a sleep method as long as the value is true. Something like :
public class Bot {
private Thread t ;
private boolean isPaused;
public Bot(){
t = new Thread(new Runnable(){
#Override
public void run() {
while (true) {
System.out.println("Hi");
while(isPaused){
try {
Thread.sleep(200);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
});
t.start();
}
public void pauseBot(){
isPaused = true;
}
public void continueBot(){
isPaused = false;
}
}
But since the Thread is still running and wasting CPU, I dont find this to be a good solution. How would this look with wait() and notify().
I had a look at various tutorials about that topic but somehow I couldnt apply them to my issue.
Everytime I tried it I either got IllegalMonitorStateException or the code stopped my whole application and not just the Thread I wanted to be stopped.
Another question I have is: How do prevent the Thread from beeing paused at a critical moment e.g.
Runnable r = new Runnable(){
#Override
public void run() {
while(true){
task1();
task2();
//Thread mustn't be stopped from here....
task3();
task4();
task5();
task6();
task7();
//... to here
task8();
task9();
task10();
}
}
};
Because when task3() .... task7() deal with something that would expire while the Thread is paused there must be a way to let the Thread finish task7() until it pauses.
I hope you can help me with my issue.
Thanks in advance,
Flo
So given this is your Thread class:
public class MyThread extends Thread
{
First, you need an lock object. This object can be everything, and if you use an existing object this takes less memory. Also define a flag if the bot should be paused.
public Object lock = this;
public boolean pause = false;
Now, define a pause() and continue() method for the thread. This sets the pause flag.
public void pause ()
{
pause = true;
}
public void continue ()
{
pause = false;
Here you need to wake up the thread. Note the synchronized on the lock object so that you don't get an IllegalMonitorStateException.
synchronized (lock)
{
lock.notifyAll();
}
}
No, define a method that automatically pauses the thread when it should be paused. You might call this at every moment when the thread can be paused.
private void pauseThread ()
{
synchronized (lock)
{
if (pause)
lock.wait(); // Note that this can cause an InterruptedException
}
}
Now, you can define your thread in the run() method:
public void run ()
{
task1();
task2();
pauseThread();
task3();
task4();
task5();
task6();
task7();
pauseThread();
task8();
task9();
task10();
}
}

Java Multithreading doesn't seem to be correctly working

I have a class which processes something. I'm trying to run a number of instances of this class in parallel.
However, I'm not sure if in TaskManager.startAll(), when I call r.go(), whether this would cause r to start running in its own thread, or within the main thread?
The total execution time that I'm getting seems to be very high, and despite my attempts at optimizing, nothing seems to be having any effect. Also, if I run a profiler on my project in Netbeans, it shows all the threads as sleeping. So I'd like to know if I'm doing something wrong?
This is the structure of the class:
public class TaskRunner implements Runnable {
private boolean isRunning = false;
public void run() {
while(true) {
while (! running) {
try {
Thread.sleep(1);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
process();
}
}
public void go() {
isRunning = true;
}
public void stop() {
isRunning = false;
}
private void process() {
//Do some number crunching and processing here
}
}
Here's how these are being run / managed:
public class TaskManager {
private ArrayList<TaskRunner> runners = new ArrayList<>();
public TaskManager() {
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
TaskRunner r = new TaskRunner();
new Thread(r).start();
runners.add(r);
}
}
public void startAll() {
for (TaskRunner r : runners) {
r.go();
}
}
}
Indeed, you are not "doing it right." If you want to create a multi-threaded Java application, the place to start is with the java.util.concurrent package.
It appears from your code that you want to run ten tasks in parallel. I assume that after "number crunching and processing," you'll want to aggregate the results and do something with them in the main thread. For this, the invokeAll() method of ExecutorService works well.
First, implement Callable to do the work you show in your process() method.
final class YourTask implements Callable<YourResults> {
private final YourInput input;
YourTask(YourInput input) {
this.input = input;
}
#Override
public YourResults call()
throws Exception
{
/* Do some number crunching and processing here. */
return new YourResults(...);
}
}
Then create your tasks and run them. This would take the place of your main() method:
Collection<Callable<YourResults>> tasks = new List<>(inputs.size());
for (YourInput i : inputs)
tasks.add(new YourTask(i));
ExecutorService workers = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(10);
/* The next call blocks while the worker threads complete all tasks. */
List<Future<YourResult>> results = workers.invokeAll(tasks);
workers.shutdown();
for (Future<YourResult> f : results) {
YourResult r = f.get();
/* Do whatever it is you do with the results. */
...
}
However, I'm not sure if in TaskManager.startAll(), when I call r.go(), whether this would cause r to start running in its own thread, or within the main thread?
So my first comment is that you should make isRunning be volatile since it is being shared between threads. If the threads are not starting when it goes to true (or seem to be delayed in starting) then I suspect that's your problem. volatile provides memory synchronization between the threads so the thread that calls go() and makes a change to isRunning will be seen immediately by the thread waiting for the change.
Instead of spinning like this, I would use wait/notify:
// this synchronizes on the instance of `TaskRunner`
synchronized (this) {
// always do your wait in a while loop to protect against spurious wakeups
while (!isRunning && !Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
try {
// wait until the notify is called on this object
this.wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
Then in the go() method you should do the following. stop() would be similar.
public void go() {
synchronized (this) {
isRunning = true;
this.notifyAll();
}
}
Notice that you should handle thread interrupts carefully. Test for isInterrupted() in the while running loop and re-interrupt a thread when InterruptedException is thrown is always a good pattern.
The total execution time that I'm getting seems to be very high, and despite my attempts at optimizing, nothing seems to be having any effect. Also, if I run a profiler on my project in Netbeans, it shows all the threads as sleeping.
So although the threads are mostly sleeping, they are still each looping 1000 times a second because of your Thread.sleep(1). If you increased the time sleeping (after making isRunning be volatile) they would loop less but the right mechanism is to use the wait/notify to signal the thread.
Awful solution, terrible. first I highly recommend you start reading some tutorial like [this]
Second, if threads should wait for a signal to go for some job, so why just don't you wait them!!!!!, something like this
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class TaskManager
{
//////////////////////
public volatile static Signal wait=new Signal();
//////////////////////
private ArrayList<TaskRunner> runners = new ArrayList<>();
public TaskManager()
{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
TaskRunner r = new TaskRunner();
new Thread(r).start();
runners.add(r);
}
try {
Thread.sleep(1000);
startAll();
Thread.sleep(1000);
pauseAll();
Thread.sleep(1000);
startAll();
Thread.sleep(1000);
haltAll();System.out.println("DONE!");
}catch(Exception ex){}
}
public void startAll()
{
synchronized(wait){
wait.setRun(true);;
wait.notifyAll();
}
}
public void pauseAll(){
wait.setRun(false);
}
public void haltAll(){
for(TaskRunner tx:runners){tx.halt();}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
new TaskManager();
}
}
class TaskRunner implements Runnable
{
private Thread thisThread;
private volatile boolean run=true;
public void run()
{
thisThread=Thread.currentThread();
while(run){
if(!TaskManager.wait.isRun()){
synchronized(TaskManager.wait)
{
if(!TaskManager.wait.isRun()){
System.out.println("Wait!...");
try
{
TaskManager.wait.wait();
}
catch (Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
break;
}
}
}}
process();
}
}
private double r=Math.random();
private void process(){System.out.println(r);try {
Thread.sleep(10);
} catch (Exception e) {
// TODO: handle exception
}}
public void halt(){run=false;thisThread.interrupt();}
}
class Signal{
private boolean run=false;
public boolean isRun() {
return run;
}
public void setRun(boolean run) {
this.run = run;
}
}
in above sample, all runners works till the Signal run boolean is true, and simple TaskManager class set tit as false for every time it needs to pause the threads. and about the halt, it just set the shutdown(run) flag to false, and also interrupt the thread because of if thread is in wait state.
I hope I could prove your solution is like dream-on story, and also could explained enough about my solution.
have a good parallel application :)

Thread Executor - beginner

I have two classes. In class A, I have the run() method looped forever, while in the class B, i have the threadpool.
My question is, From Class B, how can I control and stop the thread executing run() method in class A , I have tried forceshutdown, threadExecutor.shutdownNow(), But it isnt working.
The loop seems to go on forever.
Here is example piece of code:
public class A implements Runnable {
public void run() {
while (true) {
System.out.println("Hi");
}
}
}
public class B {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int noOfThreads = 1;
A ThreadTaskOne = new A();
System.out.println("Threads are being started from Class B");
ExecutorService threadExecutor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(noOfThreads);
threadExecutor.execute(ThreadTaskOne);
threadExecutor.shutdownNow();
System.out.println("B Ends, no of threads that are alive : " + Thread.activeCount());
}
}
As #MadProgammer said, your "infinite" loop needs to pay attention to Thread.isInterrupted. e.g. (very schematic)
public void run() {
while (!Thread.isInterrupted()) {
doSomethinginTheLoop1();
blah...blah...blah
// if the loop is very long you might want to check isInterrupted
// multiple times for quicker termination response
doSomethingInTheLoop2();
}
// now, here's a decision of what you do
// do you throw an InterruptedException or trust others to check interrupted flag.
// read Java COncurrency in Practice or similar...
}
The documentation on ExecutorService#shutdownNow() says -
There are no guarantees beyond best-effort attempts to stop processing actively executing tasks. For example, typical implementations will cancel via Thread.interrupt(), so any task that fails to respond to interrupts may never terminate.
And your thread doesn't seem to care if it has been interrupted.
So check if it has been interrupted
while (Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted())
instead of just doing
while (true)
May be below is useful for you.
public static class A implements Runnable {
public void run() {
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
System.out.println("Hi");
}
}
}

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