Analysis on JDK-8022321 java/lang/ref/OOMEInReferenceHandler.java fails intermittently
David Holmes
david.holmes at oracle.com
Tue Jan 21 02:22:43 UTC 2014
Hi Peter,
I do not see Cleaner being loaded prior to the main class on either
Windows or Linux. Which platform are you on? Did you see it loaded
before the main class or as part of executing it?
Also, it is not that I think ReferenceHandler is responsible for
reporting OOME, but that it is responsible for reporting that it was
unable to perform a clean or enqueue because of OOME.
Your suggested approach seems okay though I'm not sure why we shouldn't
help things along by calling System.gc() ourselves rather than just
yielding and hoping things will get cleaned up elsewhere. But for the
present purposes your approach will suffice I think.
Thanks,
David
On 20/01/2014 6:42 PM, Peter Levart wrote:
> On 01/20/2014 09:00 AM, Peter Levart wrote:
>> On 01/20/2014 02:51 AM, David Holmes wrote:
>>> Hi Peter,
>>>
>>> On 17/01/2014 11:24 PM, Peter Levart wrote:
>>>> On 01/17/2014 02:13 PM, Peter Levart wrote:
>>>>>>> // Fast path for cleaners
>>>>>>> boolean isCleaner = false;
>>>>>>> try {
>>>>>>> isCleaner = r instanceof Cleaner;
>>>>>>> } catch (OutofMemoryError oome) {
>>>>>>> continue;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> if (isCleaner) {
>>>>>>> ((Cleaner)r).clean();
>>>>>>> continue;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi David, Kalyan,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I've caught-up now. Just thinking: is "instanceof Cleaner" throwing
>>>>>> OOME as a result of loading the Cleaner class? Wouldn't the above
>>>>>> code then throw some error also in ((Cleaner)r) - the checkcast,
>>>>>> since Cleaner class would not be successfully initialized?
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, no. The above code would just skip Cleaner processing in this
>>>>> situation. And will never be doing it again after the heap is freed...
>>>>> So it might be good to load and initialize Cleaner class as part of
>>>>> ReferenceHandler initialization to ensure correct operation...
>>>>
>>>> Well, yes and no. Let me try once more:
>>>>
>>>> Above code will skip Cleaner processing if the 1st time "instanceof
>>>> Cleaner" is executed, OOME is thrown as a consequence of full heap
>>>> while
>>>> loading and initializing the Cleaner class.
>>>
>>> Yes - I was assuming that this would not fail the very first time and
>>> so the Cleaner class would already be loaded. Failing to be able to
>>> load the Cleaner class was one of the potential issues flagged
>>> earlier with this problem. I was actually assuming that Cleaner would
>>> be loaded already due to some actual Cleaner subclasses being used,
>>> but this does not happen as part of the default initialization. :(
>>> The irony being that if the Cleaner class is not loaded then r can
>>> not be an instance of Cleaner and so we would fail to load the class
>>> in a case where we didn't need it anyway.
>>>
>>> What I wanted to focus on here was an OOME from the instanceof
>>> itself, but as you say that might trigger classloading of Cleaner
>>> (which is not what I was interested in).
>>>
>>>> The 2nd time the "instanceof
>>>> Cleaner" is executed after such OOME, the same line would throw
>>>> NoClassDefFoundError as a consequence of referencing a class that
>>>> failed
>>>> initialization. Am I right?
>>>
>>> instanceof is not one of the class initialization triggers, so we
>>> should not see an OOME generated due to a class initialization
>>> exception and so the class will not be put into the Erroneous state
>>> and so subsequent attempts to use the class will not automatically
>>> trigger NoClassdefFoundError.
>>>
>>> If OOME occurs during actual loading/linking of the class Cleaner it
>>> is unclear what would happen on subsequent attempts. OOME is not a
>>> LinkageError that must be rethrown on subsequent attempts, and it is
>>> potentially a transient condition, so I would expect a re-load
>>> attempt to be allowed. However we are now deep into the details of
>>> the VM and it may well depend on the exact place from which the OOME
>>> originates.
>>>
>>> The bottom line with the current problem is that there are multiple
>>> non-obvious paths by which the ReferenceHandler can encounter an
>>> OOME. In such cases we do not want the ReferenceHandler to terminate
>>> - which implies catching the OOME and continuing. However we also do
>>> not want to silently skip Cleaner processing or reference queue
>>> processing - as that would lead to hard to diagnoze bugs. But trying
>>> to report the problem may not be possible due to being out-of-memory.
>>> It may be that we need to break things up into multiple try/catch
>>> blocks, where each catch does a System.gc() and then reports that the
>>> OOME occurred. Of course the reporting must still be in a try/catch
>>> for the OOME. Though at some point letting the ReferenceHandler die
>>> may be the only way to "report" a major memory problem.
>>>
>>> David
>>
>> Hm... If I give -verbose:class option to run a simple test program:
>>
>> public class Test { public static void main(String... a) {} }
>>
>> I see Cleaner class being loaded before Test class. I don't see by
>> which tread or if it might get loaded after main() starts, but I
>> suspect that loading of Cleaner is not a problem here. Initialization
>> of Cleaner class is not performed by ReferenceHandler thread as you
>> pointed out. The instanceof does not trigger it and if it returns true
>> then Cleaner has already been initialized. So there must be some other
>> cause for instanceof throwing OOME...
>>
>> What do you say about this variant of ReferenceHandler.run() method:
>>
>> public void run() {
>> for (;;) {
>> Reference r;
>> Cleaner c;
>> synchronized (lock) {
>> r = pending;
>> if (r != null) {
>> // instanceof operator might throw OOME
>> sometimes. Just retry after
>> // yielding - might have better luck next time...
>> try {
>> c = r instanceof Cleaner ? (Cleaner) r :
>> null;
>> } catch (OutOfMemoryError x) {
>> Thread.yield();
>> continue;
>> }
>> pending = r.discovered;
>> r.discovered = null;
>> } else {
>> // The waiting on the lock may cause an OOME
>> because it may try to allocate
>> // exception objects, so also catch OOME here
>> to avoid silent exit of the
>> // reference handler thread.
>> //
>> // Explicitly define the order of the two
>> exceptions we catch here
>> // when waiting for the lock.
>> //
>> // We do not want to try to potentially load
>> the InterruptedException class
>> // (which would be done if this was its first
>> use, and InterruptedException
>> // were checked first) in this situation.
>> //
>> // This may lead to the VM not ever trying to
>> load the InterruptedException
>> // class again.
>> try {
>> try {
>> lock.wait();
>> } catch (OutOfMemoryError x) { }
>> } catch (InterruptedException x) { }
>> continue;
>> }
>> }
>>
>> // Fast path for cleaners
>> if (c != null) {
>> c.clean();
>> continue;
>> }
>>
>> ReferenceQueue q = r.queue;
>> if (q != ReferenceQueue.NULL) q.enqueue(r);
>> }
>> }
>>
>>
>>
>> ... it tries to not consume and skip Cleaner instances when OOME is
>> caught.
>>
>> I don't think ReferenceHandler is to make responsible for reporting
>> OOMEs. Full heap is a global condition and ReferenceHandler is the
>> last to accuse for it.
>>
>> Regards, Peter
>
> Hi David,
>
> I think the following variation is even better. It executes
> Thread.yield() after catching OOME but outside synchronized block so
> that given CPU slice can be used by GC threads to make progress
> enqueueing pending References (they are not able to enqueue them while
> ReferenceHandler is holding the lock):
>
>
> public void run() {
> for (;;) {
> Reference r;
> Cleaner c;
> try {
> try {
> synchronized (lock) {
> r = pending;
> if (r != null) {
> // 'instanceof' might throw OOME
> sometimes so do this before
> // unlinking 'r' from the 'pending'
> chain...
> c = r instanceof Cleaner ? (Cleaner) r
> : null;
> // unlink 'r' from 'pending' chain
> pending = r.discovered;
> r.discovered = null;
> } else {
> // The waiting on the lock may cause an
> OOME because it may try to allocate
> // exception objects.
> lock.wait();
> continue;
> }
> }
> } catch (OutOfMemoryError x) {
> // Catch OOME from 'r instanceof Cleaner' or
> 'lock.wait()' 1st so that we don't
> // try to potentially load the
> InterruptedException class
> // (which would be done if this was its first
> use, and InterruptedException
> // were checked first) in this situation.
> // Give other threads CPU time so they
> hopefully release some objects and GC
> // clears some heap.
> // Also prevent CPU intensive spinning in case
> 'r instanceof Cleaner' above
> // persistently throws OOME for some time...
> Thread.yield();
> // retry
> continue;
> }
> } catch (InterruptedException x) {
> // Catch InterruptedException from 'lock.wait()'
> and retry
> continue;
> }
>
> // Fast path for cleaners
> if (c != null) {
> c.clean();
> continue;
> }
>
> ReferenceQueue q = r.queue;
> if (q != ReferenceQueue.NULL) q.enqueue(r);
> }
> }
>
>
> Regards, Peter
>
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