Process Instances are Stuck / Hung in Clarity

Products

• Clarity PPM SaaS
• Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

There are no errors in the BG system and BG logs. Restarting the BG service allows processes to complete, however this happens weekly.
 

Resolution

If restarting the BG only fixes the issue temporarily and the issue comes back within hours, a thread dump is needed to review why it is stuck.

In order to find out why it is no longer processing event-waiting steps, produce a thread dump.

FOR UNIX/LINUX SYSTEMS:

Use GREP to find the PID for the app or bg service that you want to create a thread dump for.

FOR WINDOWS SYSTEMS:

1.  Go to Task Manager.  
2.  Click on the Processes tab.  
3.  If the PID colum is not already showing, go to View, Select Columns and add the PID column.
4.  Look at the processes called java.exe.  The two largest ones should be the app and bg services (assuming 1 app and 1 bg on the server)
5.  Note the PIDs for the app and bg service.

FOR ALL SYSTEMS:

1.  Open a command prompt
2.  Go to the bin directory of the java_home directory for the server.
3.  Type the following command:

jstack -l PID

See the following for more information about the jstack command

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/share/jstack.html

NOTE:  Produce a dump approximately one-minute apart.  This will show if a thread that appears to be a problem is a transient one that fixes itself or one that needs to be looked into.
it is suggested to copy each thread into a separate text file.