I have a long-running process where, due to a bug, a trivial/expendable thread is deadlocked with a thread which I would like to continue, so that it can perform some final reporting that would be hard to reproduce in another way.
Of course, fixing the bug for future runs is the proper ultimate resolution. Of course, any such forced interrupt/kill/stop of any thread is inherently unsafe and likely to cause other unpredictable inconsistencies. (I'm familiar with all the standard warnings and the reasons for them.)
But still, since the only alternative is to kill the JVM process and go through a more lengthy procedure which would result in a less-complete final report, messy/deprecated/dangerous/risky/one-time techniques are exactly what I'd like to try.
The JVM is Sun's 1.6.0_16 64-bit on Ubuntu, and the expendable thread is waiting-to-lock an object monitor.
Can an OS signal directed to an exact thread create an InterruptedException in the expendable thread?
Could attaching with gdb, and directly tampering with JVM data or calling JVM procedures allow a forced-release of the object monitor held by the expendable thread?
Would a Thread.interrupt() from another thread generate a InterruptedException from the waiting-to-lock frame? (With some effort, I can inject an arbitrary beanshell script into the running system.)
Can the deprecated Thread.stop() be sent via JMX or any other remote-injection method?
Any ideas appreciated, the more 'dangerous', the better! And, if your suggestion has worked in personal experience in a similar situation, the best!
