[🐛 Bug]: ExternalProcess produces a huge amount of excessive records which prevents to fetch/read CI logs

[mykola-mokhnach]

What happened?

We use SIGINT to kill Appium process created using process builder (e.g. graceful shutdown). This closes the process stdout, but the process remains alive for a while.

There is this code in the ExternalProcess:

        new Thread(
                () -> {
                  InputStream input = process.getInputStream();
                  // use the CircularOutputStream as mandatory, we know it will never raise a
                  // IOException
                  OutputStream output = new MultiOutputStream(circular, copyOutputTo);
                  while (process.isAlive()) {
                    try {
                      // we must read the output to ensure the process will not lock up
                      input.transferTo(output);
                    } catch (IOException ex) {
                      LOG.log(
                          Level.WARNING,
                          "failed to copy the output of process " + process.pid(),
                          ex);
                    }
                  }
                })
            .start();

As a result the above while loop spins for a few seconds thus producing a huge amount of warnings that significantly increase the overall log size, so it cannot be even fetched from the CI properly or read in the browser. A single record looks like:

Nov 04, 2023 8:10:01 AM org.openqa.selenium.os.ExternalProcess$Builder lambda$start$0
WARNING: failed to copy the output of process 63950
java.io.IOException: Stream closed
	at java.base/java.io.BufferedInputStream.getBufIfOpen(BufferedInputStream.java:168)
	at java.base/java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(BufferedInputStream.java:334)
	at java.base/java.io.InputStream.transferTo(InputStream.java:782)
	at org.openqa.selenium.os.ExternalProcess$Builder.lambda$start$0(ExternalProcess.java:209)
	at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:833)

How can we reproduce the issue?

Run Appium Java client CI. Example: https://github.com/appium/java-client/actions/runs/6751224992/job/18359734036?pr=2067

Relevant log output

https://github.com/appium/java-client/actions/runs/6751224992/job/18359734036?pr=2067

Operating System

macos

Selenium version

4.15.2

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Appium

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Are you using Selenium Grid?

no

[github-actions]

@mykola-mokhnach, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[mykola-mokhnach]

cc @diemol @titusfortner

[titusfortner]

Can you add a daily run of your CI to use the nightly jar? It would be useful to know when this started breaking and try to address it before release.

We can try to make sure we wait a day before making changes before a release, too just to make sure.

[joerg1985]

I think there is nothing that could be done to avoid this message. In similar cases JDK issues had been rejected, e.g. this.

As a workaround i would suggest to sleep for ~800 milliseconds before resuming to read the input stream, this should significantly reduce the number of warnings logged.

[mykola-mokhnach]

I'm not quite sure if transferTo can resurrect itself once IOException has happened. Although putting a sleep would improve the situation anyway .

[mykola-mokhnach]

Also the documentation for transferTo says:

If an I/O error occurs reading from the input stream or writing to the output stream, then it may do so after some bytes have been read or written. Consequently the input stream may not be at end of stream and one, or both, streams may be in an inconsistent state. It is strongly recommended that both streams be promptly closed if an I/O error occurs.

[krmahadevan]

@joerg1985 - What if we resorted to just warning once (the first time the error occurs)? I am going to assume that between subsequent failures, the pid and the exception are going to be the same.

Something like this ?

boolean warned = false;
while (process.isAlive()) {
  try {
    // we must read the output to ensure the process will not lock up
    input.transferTo(output);
  } catch (IOException ex) {
    if (!warned) {
      warned = true;
      LOG.log(Level.WARNING,"failed to copy the output of process " + process.pid(),ex);
    }
  }
}

[joerg1985]

@krmahadevan i think the best option is to close the streams like the documentation does suggest. Swallowing the exception might lead to a high cpu load until the process has terminated.

@titusfortner is this okay for you or do you have other ideas?

[titusfortner]

My only consideration here is that we should not be throwing warnings in logs if there isn't something a user can do to fix it. I don't see why the user needs to know this at all? Can we log as debug?

[joerg1985]

When the loop is removed, the stream should be read to it's end without throwing a exception at all. The exception is raised when we try to read the allready closed stream again.

In general it make sense to log a warning if a exception does happen, because something unexpected happens and would propably be ignored when the debug level is used.

[titusfortner]

But if it is happening everywhere for every run, it seems like we do expect it?
If it happens in the course of expected/passing executions (i.e., isn't always affecting the results of the program), and/or if there isn't anything the user can do to not get the message (e.g., it is a Selenium implementation detail), then it is extra noise we should avoid giving the user.

I do not know enough about how this works to know the right way to fix, only the above input on what I user should get to see in logs. 😁 So whatever you think is best

[joerg1985]

Okay, so i will fix this to the best of my knowledge. This is no permanent decision, the fix might be changed if there are irrelevant messages logged.