System.getRuntime().exec() sometimes hangs on Solaris 10 u4...

Question

Hi everyone, I have a multi-threaded application that basically starts external programs ( bash scripts ) using Runtime.getRuntime().exec(unixCmd); The thread waits for the process to finish and when it does, returns the return code from the process. During peak period, it's not rare that the program reaches at least 5 concurrent threads, therefore 5 process are running at the same time.
We used to run this program on Solaris 10 u2 using Java 1.5.0_6 and we never had any problem whatsoever. Recently, we moved the application to a new server running on Solaris 10 u4 using Java 1.5.0.15 and the problems started... We observed that about 1% of all the process launched hang. Even the destroy() method of the process has no effect. The only way to stop the process is with the cmd kill -9. We also observed that the script called by the application is not executed at all, not even the first line.
Here is my code:
    Runtime shell = Runtime.getRuntime();
    Process proc = shell.exec(cmd_unix_final);
    if (Server.getProperty(PROP_LOG_ENABLED).toLowerCase().equals("true"))
      outputGobbler = new StreamGobbler(proc.getInputStream(), Server.getProperty(PROP_LOG_OUTPUT_FILE), Server.getPhase());
      errorGobbler = new StreamGobbler(proc.getErrorStream(), Server.getProperty(PROP_LOG_ERROR_FILE), Server.getPhase());
      outputGobbler.start();
      errorGobbler.start();
    do
      try
        returnValue = proc.exitValue();
        processFinished = true;
      catch (IllegalThreadStateException e)
        try { Thread.sleep(sleepInterval);}catch(InterruptedException ex){ex.printStackTrace();}
    while (System.currentTimeMillis() - launchTime < threadTimeout * 1000 * 60 && !processFinished);
    if (!processFinished)
      proc.destroy();
      returnValue = ServerReturnCodes.SERVER_RETURN_CODE_TIMEOUT_ERROR;
    return returnValue;
...If you have any idea what is causing the problem, please let me know, thanks!

Answer 1

Thank you both for your replys. We are going to try an other version of Java soon... As for the process, the bash script does not even gets executed, the process hangs before that, at the creation phase.