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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? 

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 stuck threads.

What Are Stuck Threads?

As the name suggests, stuck threads 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

Thread-stuck 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. 

Thread dumps represent the current state of every thread operating in your JVM at certain times. They will provide information on each thread, 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 stuck threads and discover their causes during your software automation testing services:

Check for Locking in Thread Dumps 

Thread dumps 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 your threads have 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 thread-stuck problems. Automation testing services employ such features to analyze larger thread dumps. Manual input is still necessary, but a computerized program will make it easier to start. 

To use thread dumps for your app testing services, you will have to rely on tools like jstack. The program lets you capture thread dumps of 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 thread dumps and identify potential stuck issues:

kill -quit < process-id > 

Final Thoughts

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