[kepler-users] Problems running workflows with newer revisions

[Edward A. Lee]

This sounds like a threading bug.
If you would like to know how I feel about threads, read this:

http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/papers/06/problemwithThreads/

If you are using only built-in actors, then it really would be great to 
have reproducible example. And I would really like to fix it. If you 
have custom actors, then we probably can't help...

Without a reproducible example, threading bugs are impossible to fix. 
(sometimes even with a reproducible example they are impossible to fix).
Threads are a _really bad_ concurrency model. Sadly, they dominate 
concurrency today...

Edward

On 2/13/13 2:33 PM, Jonathan Boright wrote:
> Dear Kepler users,
>
> We have been using kepler for a while now and have developed a number 
> of fairly large and complex workflows. We recently updated kepler and 
> have found that our old workflows 'hang' after only a short time (less 
> than a minute). As far as I can tell they don't always hang in the 
> same spot. We have been trying to create a model to post on this forum 
> that demonstrates this behavior, but as soon as we pare the model down 
> to a size small enough to post and strip out our customized code... 
> they tend to work fine. So in lieu of an example model I'll attempt to 
> describe the strucure of our models, the symptoms, and some avenues 
> that we have used to try and narrow down the issues.
>
> Our old models run in the following svn revision(s):
> svn info details:
> Working Copy Root Path: /cygdrive/c/Kepler/svn/[build-area etc.]
> Revision: 30654
> Working Copy Root Path: /cygdrive/c/Kepler/svn/ptolemy/src
> Revision: 64636
>
> They 'hang' when run in the following revision(s)
> svn info details:
> Working Copy Root Path: /cygdrive/c/Kepler/svn/build-area
> Revision: 31428 - 31431 (current)
> Working Copy Root Path: /cygdrive/c/Kepler/svn/ptolemy/src
> Revision: *65654 - *65658 (current)
>
> I'll describe one particular model as an example:
> The workflow is a hydrlogic model which has the following attributes:
> - a PN director.
> - the most comon token is a double matrix token ([double]) of size 
> 360x270.
> - many composite actors, some with sdf directors (opaque) and some 
> without directors (transparant).
> - an opaque composite actor made into a class object with many (~30?) 
> instances of this class.
> - multiple Nondeterministic Merge actors (to re-use tokens)
>
> When this model is run in newer revisions, it runs for a bit (usually 
> less than 1 minute) and then just stops going forwards... no error 
> messages... just hung. When we then attempt to stop the model it gives 
> the message "wrapping up" but hangs there. Sometimes I'm able to close 
> the window, sometimes I need to kill kepler throught the task-manager...
>
> We have noticed some changes in kepler/ptolemy... for example, it is 
> now possible to make transparant composite actors into classes (which 
> is useful... thank you). We hypothesized that perhaps something 
> changed in the way that the PN director handles the opaque composite 
> actors, and that this change is causing the log-jam (or an 
> un-satisfied 'race condition'?) ... so we removed all of the sdf 
> directors making all of the composite actors transparant. This made 
> some difference in some of our smaller workflows but still the larger 
> noes hang...
>
> I'll end this note here and see if I can come up with a concrete 
> example. In the mean time, any new perspectives or thoughts would be 
> helpful.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Jon Boright
>
> ---------------------------------
> Jonathan Boright
> Research Scientist
> ISciences, LLC
> 61 Main Street, Suite 200
> Burlington, VT 0540
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kepler-users mailing list
> Kepler-users at kepler-project.org
> http://lists.nceas.ucsb.edu/kepler/mailman/listinfo/kepler-users

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