Shutdown of JBoss AS 5.1 sometimes hangs

[baradon]

Hi folks,

we sometimes see, that a shutdown of JBoss AS 5.1 (via shutdown script) just hangs without any further log message.  I have the impression, that the reason is either an open network connection, or an open database connection, which is still not finished.

Anyways, is there a possibility to shutdown the server even in those cases.  The only possibility we have so far is "kill -9" on the Java process.

Is there a simple way to check, what could be the cause of the hanging?

All the best,

    Heiner

[peterj]

First, check the log to make sure that it received the shutdown signal. Second, when the shutdown appears to "hang", take a JVM thread dump. Usually the stack trace for one of the threads will give a clue as to what is causing the holdup. The JVM will not exit until all threads are teminated, so one of the htreads still running is the culprit.

[baradon]

Hi Peter,

well, I can do this in the lab, but I fear, it will not be possible to ask our customer to do such things on-site.  Nevertheless, I will try to investigate it further. (And:  Yes, the shutdown signal was received in all of those events.)

But the main question remains:  Is there a way to tell the JVM to terminate completely, killing all of it's threads if they do not close properly?

Heiner

[peterj]

But the main question remains:  Is there a way to tell the JVM to terminate completely, killing all of it's threads if they do not close properly?

Yes, but you found it already: kill -9

I recommend you still run shutdown first and only use kill -9 if the shutdown doesn't happen. By doing this at least the threads that are not hung will have a chance to terminate.

[baradon]

Okay, if this is the only way ...

We extended the init script.  It first runs a normal shutdown and waits some time.  If it detects a hanging server afterwards, it writes a thread dump to a file and goes for the heavy artillery .

All the best,

Heiner