[vtkusers] VTK/Java crashes -- WeakGlobalRef or garbage collection problem?

[David E DeMarle]

Hi Eran,

About a month ago I removed the use of WeakGlobalReferences in
vtkJavaUtil.cxx to address just this issue. The change has not yet been
propagated into the vtk 5.X release.

That solved the problem of the indeterminant crashes you've seen but using
GlobalReferences means that java wrapped vtk objects in the application code
will never be destructed by the garbage collecting thread. So in order to
avoid unbounded memory conumption you have to do the very un-java like thing
of making sure your references to VTK objects are deleted when you are
finished with them.

for example
int i = 0;
while (true)
  {
   vtkSphereSource sphere = new vtkSphereSource();
   sphere.SetCenter(i,i,i);
   i++;
  }

This code will eventually consume all available memory.
Whereas this code will not:
int i = 0;
while (true)
  {
   vtkSphereSource sphere = new vtkSphereSource();
   sphere.SetCenter(i,i,i);
   i++;
   sphere = null; //causes the destructor to be called.
  }

hope that helps,
Dave DeMarle


On 6/18/07, Eran Guendelman <erang at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> We're getting very weird crashes using VTK with Java wrappings.  They're
>   weird because they occur at random times during the execution of our
> program, but when run long enough they always do seem to eventually
> occur (e.g. after 2-5 minutes).  My main approach to getting it to crash
>   is to start the animation in our application, the animation makes lots
> of calls to functions such as these
>
> public void setNormalAtLocation(int index, double x, double y, double z) {
>
>         vtkPointData t = pointPolyData.GetPointData();
>          vtkDataArray u = t.GetNormals();
>          u.SetTuple3(index, x, y, z);
> }
>
> and
>
> public void setTensorDataAtLocation(int index, double xx, double xy,
> double xz, double yx, double yy, double yz, double zx, double zy, double
> zz)
> {
>          vtkPointData t = pointPolyData.GetPointData();
>          t.GetTensors().SetTuple9(index, xx, xy, xz, yx, yy, yz, zx, zy,
> zz);
> }
>
> and the crash typically occurs inside one of these functions.
> pointPolyData is a class member of type vtkPolyData.
> methods exist.
>
> I've #defined VTKJAVADEBUG when compiling the (debug) VTK libraries, and
> also added other print statements for my own debugging use, and by
> examining the output I've started to see a pattern in what seems to be
> causing the crash.  Basically, there are two threads that are calling
> down to VTK C++ calls... these are the main event thread, and the
> finalizer thread which does garbage collection.  What seems to be
> happening is that in a call such as
>
>         vtkPointData t = pointPolyData.GetPointData ();
>          vtkDataArray u = t.GetNormals();
>
> when the GetNormals is getting processed in the C++ side, for some
> reason the garbage collector seems to think that t can be deallocated,
> and the finalizer deletes it from under the feet of the main event
> thread which expects it to exist... so e.g. we have something like
>
> t.GetNormals()
>         causes the execution of
> Java_vtk_vtkDataSetAttributes_GetNormals_120
>         which calls
> vtkJavaGetPointerFromObject
>         which calls vtkJavaGetId and gets a valid id for the object, but
> then
> gets ptr = 0 and command = 0 for that object because in the meantime the
> garbage collector has called vtkJavaDeleteObject which deleted it from
> the hash table
>
>         So now back in
> Java_vtk_vtkDataSetAttributes_GetNormals_120
>         it receives a NULL pointer, but assumes it's not NULL and calls
> (op)->GetNormals()
>         causing a crash!
>
> Anyway, in vtkJavaUtil.cxx I found that weak global references were used
> (NewWeakGlobalRef and DeleteWeakGlobalRef called, at least for
> JNI_VERSION_1_2 and up which is the case in our install).  Admittedly I
> don't know much about these creatures, but looking online I found a
> comment in http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/jni/jni-12.html
> saying that weak global references are dangerous because they don't
> count as a real reference as far as garbage collection is concerned, and
> the type of potential problem mentioned in this document sounded very
> similar to what we are experiencing (objects getting garbage collected
> during call to native method).  So I tried changing to non-weak global
> refs (NewGlobalRef and DeleteGlobalRef), and indeed found that our
> crashes seemed to stop (by which I mean I ran it for 10 minutes without
> crashing which never happened before...  doesn't conclusively mean the
> crash is fixed, but seems to be a positive change).
>
>
> So has anyone else experienced a similar problem?  Anyone know whether
> the use of weak global references by VTK/Java is indeed a mistake, or
> should they be working and we just have some other problem with our code?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated,
>
> Eran.
>
>
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