The reliability of python threads

[Carl J. Van Arsdall]

John Nagle wrote:
> Aahz wrote:
>   
>> In article <mailman.3166.1169752349.32031.python-list at python.org>,
>> Carl J. Van Arsdall <cvanarsdall at mvista.com> wrote:
>> My point is that an app that dies only once every few months under load
>> is actually pretty damn stable!  That is not the kind of problem that
>> you are likely to stimulate.
>>     
>
>      This has all been so vague.  How does it die?
>   
Well, before operating on most of the data I perform type checks, if the 
type check fails, my system flags an exception.  Now i'm in the process 
of finding out how the data went bad.  I gotta wait at this point 
though, so I was investigating possibilities so I could find a new way 
of throwing the kitchen sink at it.


>      It would be useful if Python detected obvious deadlock.  If all threads
> are blocked on mutexes, you're stuck, and at that point, it's time
> to abort and do tracebacks on all threads.   You shouldn't have to
> run under a debugger to detect that.
>
>      Then a timer, so that if the Global Python Lock
> stays locked for more than N seconds, you get an abort and a traceback.
> That way, if you get stuck in some C library, it gets noticed.
>
>      Those would be some good basic facilities to have in thread support.
>   
I agree.  That would be incredibly useful.  Although doesn't this spark 
up the debate on threads killing threads?  From what I understand, this 
is frowned upon (and was removed from java because it was dangerous).  
Although I think that if there was a master or control thread that 
watched the state of the system and could intervene, that would be 
powerful.  One way to do this could be to use processes, and each 
process could catch a kill signal if it appears to be stalled, although 
I am absolutely sure there is more to it than that.  I don't think this 
could be done at all with python threads though, but as a fan of python 
threads and their ease of use, it would be a nice and powerful feature 
to have.


-carl


-- 

Carl J. Van Arsdall
cvanarsdall at mvista.com
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