Question

I have a REST service built using Jersey.

When I performed a “curl” against my REST API, the command hangs.

I ran jstack & this is a summarized output of two threads in BLOCKED state.

"pool-2-thread-11" prio=6 tid=0x01d51800 nid=0x2394 
 waiting for monitor entry [0x05e6f000..0x05e6fce8]
java.lang.Thread.State: BLOCKED (on object monitor)
    at com.moi.DefaultImageProcessor$DownloadAndScaleCallable.call(
          DefaultImageProcessor.java:168)
    - waiting to lock <0x257aa440> 
     (com.moi.ImageUriMutexImpl$MutexImpl)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
      at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:441)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(
        ThreadPoolExecutor.java:885)

"pool-2-thread-10" prio=6 tid=0x01d51000 nid=0x18d0
 waiting for monitor entry [0x05e1f000..0x05e1fd68]
java.lang.Thread.State: BLOCKED (on object monitor)
    at com.moi.DefaultImageProcessor$DownloadAndScaleCallable.call(
          DefaultImageProcessor.java:168)
    - waiting to lock <0x257aa6b8> 
     (com.moi.ImageUriMutexImpl$MutexImpl)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
      at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:441)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
      at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(
        ThreadPoolExecutor.java:885)

I want to know how to read this stack dump. What signs should I look for in a deadlock ?

UPDATE I solved my problem! Basically I am doing a HttpClient 4.0 GET inside the synchronized block. The HttpClient was behaving badly & not returning & it held onto the locks. Via jstack, there were a couple of threads holding on to locks which caused the problem above. I understand now that it wasn’t deadlocks so much but that my synchronized blocks were taking too long to return.

Answer 1

From the little stack trace the threads are only waiting to acquire lock. In the trace look for the objects 0x257aa440 and 0x257aa6b8 and see who have locked those objects. Check if that thread is blocked.

In deadlock situation you would see a complete circle for blocked states. Also take the trace multiple times to confirm if the blocked state is momentary or a long wait.