Identifying and Diagnosing Thread Stuck Issues During Testing

Thread-stuck issues during testing can be very frustrating. They stop you from progressing further with your product and affect the overall development. But how exactly can you find these and diagnose them? Learn how to Identify and Diagnose Thread Stuck Issues During Testing

If you’re an automation testing company struggling with stuck threads, you should know there are several solutions you can try. This article will present a few ways to identify and diagnose such issues.

What Are Stuck Threads?

These are actually blocked threads. They are stopped from returning to the thread pool by various obstacles. Generally speaking, threats that don’t return for several hundreds of seconds are considered stuck, and you need to take action to solve them. 

How to Identify and Diagnose Thread Stuck Issues During Testing

Such problems can have multiple causes, but you can identify them quickly if you know where to look. The easiest way to do this is by checking Java thread dumps. 

These represent the current state of every thread operating in your JVM at certain times. They will provide information on each one, including the name, ID, state, and more. If there are any performance issues in a Java app while testing, you will immediately see what’s going on with the help of a thread dump. 

Here is what you can do to find them and discover their causes during your software automation testing services:

Check for Locking in Thread Dumps 

These represent the best way to see what’s happening and why you might be experiencing issues. If there is a locked thread, chances are it’s the reason why it has run into an obstacle. The locked one is causing the others to wait forever.

Look for the Database’s Stability 

Sometimes, the culprit for a stuck thread is an unstable database connection or network. Check for this by looking in the server logs. If you can, you can also boost the JDBC adapter logging level to improve the connection.

Take Advantage of Automated Tools 

Automated tools are among the best methods to discover such problems. Automation testing services employ such features to analyze larger dumps. Manual input is still necessary, but a computerized program will make it easier to start. 

To use them for your app testing services, you will have to rely on tools like jstack. The program lets you capture them from any running Java app. 

It offers the ID of the JVM that keeps the application running. If you want to take a thread dump, the following command will help you out:

jstack < PID > thread-dump.txt

If you are working on a Linux platform, you can use a kill command to capture them and identify potential stuck issues:

kill -quit < process-id > 

Final Thoughts

Automated tools make it easy to solve such issues. However, the key is to analyze them so you know the state of each thread, so you know how to proceed. Sometimes, an unstable network or database connection could lead to the them being stuck. Once you detect the causes, you can diagnose and solve such issues.