RFR (S) 8212207: runtime/InternalApi/ThreadCpuTimesDeadlock.java crashes with SEGV in pthread_getcpuclockid+0x0

David Holmes david.holmes at oracle.com
Tue Nov 20 00:01:09 UTC 2018


Bug: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8212207
webrev: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~dholmes/8212207/webrev/

There is an internal management API that reports CPU times for 
NonJavaThreads (NJTs). That functionality requires a valid/live target 
thread so that we can use its pthread_t identity to obtain its CPU clock 
via pthread_getcpuclockid().

There is an iteration mechanism for NJTs in which the NJT is registered 
during its constructor and de-registered during its destructor. A thread 
that has only been constructed has not yet executed and so is not a 
valid target for this management API. This seems to be the cause of 
failures reported in this bug (and JDK-8213434). Registering a NJT only 
when it starts executing is an appealing fix for this, but that impacts 
all current users of the NJT list and straight-away causes a problem 
with the BarrierSet initialization logic. So I don't attempt that.

Instead the first part of the fix is for ThreadTimesClosure::do_thread 
to skip threads that have not yet executed - which we can recognize by 
seeing an uninitialized (i.e. zero) stackbase.

A second part of the fix, which can be deferred to a separate RFE for 
NJT lifecycle management if desired, tackles the problem of encountering 
a terminated thread during iteration - which can also lead to SEGVs. 
This can arise because NJT's are not actually "destructed", even if they 
terminate, and so they never get removed from the NJT list. Calling 
destructors is problematic because the code using these NJTs assume they 
are always valid. So the fix in this case is to move the de-registering 
from the NJT list out of the destructor and into the Thread::call_run() 
method so it is done before a thread actually terminates. This can be 
considered a first step in cleaning up the NJT lifecycle, where the 
remaining steps touch on a lot of areas and so need to be handled 
separately e.g. see JDK-8087340 for shutting down WorkGang GC worker 
threads.

Testing: tiers 1 -3

I should point out that I've been unable to reproduce this failure 
locally, even after thousands of runs. I'm hoping Zhengyu can test this 
in the conditions reported in JDK-8213434.

Thanks,
David


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