Question

is there a way to determing if a jvm is shutting down normally? Shutdown hook can only spawn a thread, is there a way to determine if the JVM is existing normally or abnormally at that time?

Answer 1

I remembered a similar question being asked time ago. One possible course of action is the use of SignalHandler.

You can read the full article here. It appears to be related to IBM JVM but I think it is equally valid for Java Hotspot.

A little-known feature of Java is the
ability of an application to install
its own signal handler, which is
supported through the sun.misc.Signal
class. However, use caution when using
classes from the sun.misc package
because it contains undocumented
support classes that may change
between releases of Java. You can
install a Java handler for any signal
that is not used by the JVM. These
signal handlers are similar to native
handlers because they’re invoked when
a native system signal is raised, but
they will always run as a separate
Java thread. Essentially, when a
signal is raised for which a Java
signal handler is available, the JVM’s
“signal dispatcher thread” is woken up
and informed of the signal. The signal
dispatcher thread then invokes a Java
method to create and start a new
thread for the installed Java signal
handler. To write a Java signal
handler, define a class that
implements the sun.misc.SignalHandler
interface and register the handler by
using the sun.misc.Signal.handle()
method.