Can multilevel locks cause deadlocks in multithread programs?

Question

I have a program with writers and readers and their access right is controlled by a monitor.

So, this was supposed to starve, but I got a deadlock. I was wondering why and then I remembered that I put another lock, which I think was unnecessary inside my read method inside readers to protect my global variable from inconsistencies. I thought it wouldn't cause any deadlock, because I could run the threads 10000 time without any deadlock occurring, but when I had to do my lab demo, it deadlocked at the 10010th thread I think. I don't understand why it would do that though. Also, I didn't expect it to starve, but apparently it was supposed to.

My question is: are those multilevel locks responsible for the deadlock? If not, what's causing this?!

    import java.io.*;
    import java.io.IOException;
    import java.util.*;

    public class Writer extends Thread{

    private int number;

    public Writer(int number)
    {
        this.number = number;
    }

    public int getNumber()
    {
        return number;
    }

        public static void Write(String filename){

        try {

            String content = RandomString();


            File f = new File(filename);

            if (!f.exists())
            {
                f.createNewFile();
            }


            PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("Task1out.txt", true)));
            out.println(content);
            out.close();


        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static String RandomString(){

        String chars = new String("0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ");
        int n = chars.length();

        String randomString = new String();
        Random r = new Random();

            for (int i=0; i<100; i++)
            {
                randomString = randomString + chars.charAt(r.nextInt(n));
            }

        System.out.println("RandomString() generated: " + randomString);

        return randomString;

    }



    public void run(){

        try{

        //FileControl fc = new FileControl();

            int number = this.getNumber();


            for(int i = 0; i <1000; i++) //CHANGE IT TO 1000
            {
                main.fc.WriterEntry(number);

                //write file random characters (must append)

                Write("Task1out.txt");

                main.fc.WriterExit(number);

            }
        } catch(InterruptedException e)
        {
            System.out.println("Interrupted Exception caught");
        }

    }


}

This is the writer class.

    import java.io.BufferedWriter;
    import java.io.BufferedReader;
    import java.io.File;
    import java.io.FileWriter;
    import java.io.FileReader;
    import java.io.IOException;
    import java.util.*;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.Lock;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;



public class Reader extends Thread{


    private int number;

    public Reader(int number)
    {
        this.number = number;
    }


    public int getNumber()
    {
        return number;
    }

        public static synchronized void Read(String filename)throws InterruptedException{

        BufferedReader br = null;





            main.lock.lock(); //lock
        try{




        try {


            String line;
            char[] chars = new char[100];
            int readIndex2 = 0;
            int addToIndex = 0;



            br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filename));


            int initialReadIndex = main.getIndex();




            System.out.println("initial read index: " + initialReadIndex);

            while ((line = br.readLine()) != null && readIndex2 < initialReadIndex+100 && addToIndex < 100) {

                for(int i = 0; i< 100; i++)
                {
                    if (initialReadIndex == readIndex2 || initialReadIndex < readIndex2)
                    {

                        if(line.length() > addToIndex)
                        {




                        chars[i] = line.charAt(i);
                        addToIndex++;
                        }


                    }
                    else
                    {
                        readIndex2++;
                    }
                }
                System.out.println(chars);
            }

            if(line == null)
            {
                System.out.println("nothing to read");
            }



            main.incrementIndex(addToIndex);


            System.out.println("current read index: " + (initialReadIndex + addToIndex));





        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.out.println("buffered reader exception");
        } finally {


            try {


                if (br != null)
                    {

                    br.close();
                    }
            } catch (IOException ex) {
                ex.printStackTrace();
                System.out.println("exception during closing");
            }
        }
        }finally{
            main.lock.unlock(); //lock

        }

        }


    public void run(){

        try{


        //FileControl fc = new FileControl();


        int number = this.getNumber();


            for(int i = 0; i <1000; i++) //CHANGE IT TO 1000
            {
                main.fc.ReaderEntry(number);

                //read file

                Read("Task1out.txt");

                main.fc.ReaderExit(number);
            }
        } catch(InterruptedException e)
        {
            System.out.println("Interrupted Exception caught");
        }

    }



        }

This is the reader class.

 import java.io.BufferedWriter;
    import java.io.BufferedReader;
    import java.io.File;
    import java.io.FileWriter;
    import java.io.FileReader;
    import java.io.IOException;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.Lock;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;

    public class main{

    public static FileControl fc = new FileControl();

    final static Lock lock = new ReentrantLock();

    public static int readIndex;

    public static void incrementIndex(int increment) {


                readIndex = readIndex + increment;

    }

    public static int getIndex()
    {
        return readIndex;
    }



    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {



            Writer [] writer = new Writer[10];
            Reader [] reader = new Reader[10];

            for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
            {
                reader[i] = new Reader(i);
                writer[i] = new Writer(i);
                //creating readers and writers

            }

            for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
            {
                //anonymous threads
                //(new Thread(new Writer())).start();
                //(new Thread(new Reader())).start();

                reader[i].start();
                writer[i].start();

            }




            for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
            {
                try{
                    reader[i].join();
                    writer[i].join();
                } catch(InterruptedException e){
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }


            }






        }

}

This is the main class.

    import java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.Lock;
    import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;


    public class FileControl {
    final Lock lock = new ReentrantLock();
    final Condition writers = lock.newCondition();
    final Condition readers = lock.newCondition();
    int activereaders = 0;
    int waitingwriters = 0;
    boolean writing = false;

    public void WriterEntry(int number)throws InterruptedException{
        lock.lock();
        try{
                if(writing == true || activereaders > 0){
                    waitingwriters++;
                    System.out.println("Writer thread " + number + " : waiting to write");
                    writers.await();
                    waitingwriters--;
                }
                System.out.println("Writer thread " + number + " : ready to write");

                writing = true;
           }
        finally{
            lock.unlock();
        }


    }



    public void WriterExit(int number)throws InterruptedException{
        lock.lock();
        try{
            System.out.println("Writer thread " + number + " : finished to write");

            System.out.println("writers " + waitingwriters + "readers " + activereaders); //test

            if(waitingwriters > 0)
                writers.signal();
            else{
                writing = false;
                readers.signal();
            }
        }
        finally{
            lock.unlock();
        }

    }


    public void ReaderEntry(int number)throws InterruptedException{
        lock.lock();
        try{

            if(writing == true || waitingwriters > 0){ //remove activereaders > 0
                System.out.println("Reader thread " + number + " : waiting to read");
                readers.await();
                activereaders++;
            }


            System.out.println("Reader thread " + number + " : ready to read");
        }
        finally{
            lock.unlock();
        }

    }

    public void ReaderExit(int number)throws InterruptedException{
        lock.lock();
        try{



        activereaders--;



        System.out.println("Reader thread " + number + " : finished to read");

        System.out.println("writers " + waitingwriters + "readers " + activereaders); //test

            if(activereaders == 0)
            {
                if(waitingwriters > 0)
                {
                    writers.signal();
                }
                else
                {
                    readers.signal();
                }
            }
        }
        finally{
            lock.unlock();
        }

    }


}

This is the monitor.

pseudocode for the monitor

Answer 1

Whenever you have multiple locks A, B and C you can have deadlock if you don't guarantee that your code attempts to acquire said locks in the same order.

final Lock A = new ReentrantLock();
final Lock B = new ReentrantLock();
final Lock C = new ReentrantLock();

A,B,C or C,B,A, or A,C,B - it does not matter so long as the order is consistent.

A problem arises when you have one code path try for: A,B,C And another trying for C,B,A.

As you can probably guess since A and C are both being held, one of the two will get B and then both will deadlock. (Aka you have a cycle in the resource locking graph)

Formally speaking deadlock can arise only if all of the following conditions hold:

1. No Preemption: The system will not free resources after allocation; they can only be released by the holding process.
2. Circular Wait: Discussed above.
3. Mutual Exclusion: Only one process can use a resource at any given time.
4. Resource Holding: A process is currently holding at least one resource and requesting/waiting for additional resources which are held by another process.

The best solution is to make sure the order is consistent or lock at a higher (single) level. Another option is to use a locking library that will timeout while attempting to lock (or use conditions and write your own wrapper that does this). But that approach is not for the faint of heart. Some implementation of this will wait a random amount of time and try again, but this can be highly inefficient as the number of locks increases.

Resources:

• Here is a practical article on analyzing deadlock in Java that you might be interested in: http://www.journaldev.com/1058/java-deadlock-example-and-how-to-analyze-deadlock-situation
• You can also use open source tools like JCarder to find deadlock: http://www.jcarder.org/ which for programs with large dumps can be easier then trying to grok dump files.

P.S. I didn't actually read much of your code since its poorly formatted and and is not a minimal example (ie. too verbose for our purposes here). But this advice should answer you question from a theoretical standpoint.

Answer 2

It's certainly possible. It's also possible for you to check at runtime!

The first step is to get the thread dump. Here are three methods:

• If you open up the process in VisualVM, and go to the "threads" tab, it'll tell you if it detects this sort of a deadlock. You can then do a thread dump (there's a button right there), which will tell you what each thread is doing, as well as any locks it owns and any which locks (if any) it's trying to acquire.
• On Linux or Mac, you can get the stack by issuing kill -3 <pid>, where <pid> is your java process' id. It'll dump that same thread dump to stderr. The bottom of that thread dump will also contain a summary of deadlocks it detects. I don't know how to do this on Windows.
• You can also invoke jstack <pid>, which will print the thread dump to stdout (the jstack's stdout, not the original java process').

I wrote up a sample program that deadlocks and ran it (see my gist). The relevant section of the thread dump is:

Found one Java-level deadlock:
=============================
"Thread-2":
  waiting for ownable synchronizer 7f42b0f38, (a java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync),
  which is held by "Thread-1"
"Thread-1":
  waiting for ownable synchronizer 7f42ba170, (a java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync),
  which is held by "Thread-2"

And the relevant thread states are:

"Thread-2" prio=5 tid=7fc01c911000 nid=0x113d18000 waiting on condition [113d17000]
   java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking)
    at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)
    - parking to wait for  <7f30c3528> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:156)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.parkAndCheckInterrupt(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:811)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquireQueued(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:842)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquire(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1178)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync.lock(ReentrantLock.java:186)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock.lock(ReentrantLock.java:262)
    at Locky$Boomer.run(Locky.java:22)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680)

   Locked ownable synchronizers:
    - <7f30c3558> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync)

"Thread-1" prio=5 tid=7fc01d06c800 nid=0x113c15000 waiting on condition [113c14000]
   java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking)
    at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)
    - parking to wait for  <7f30c3558> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:156)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.parkAndCheckInterrupt(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:811)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquireQueued(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:842)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquire(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1178)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync.lock(ReentrantLock.java:186)
    at java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock.lock(ReentrantLock.java:262)
    at Locky$Boomer.run(Locky.java:22)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680)

   Locked ownable synchronizers:
    - <7f30c3528> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync)

This will not work on all deadlocks. For instance, deadlocks due to waiting on external resources won't get caught. But it'll catch Lock-based deadlocks, as well as synchronized-based ones.