[erlang-questions] Timeout Erlang GenServer Crash Loop

[Michael Truog]

On 10/11/2012 09:03 PM, Code Box wrote:
> ** Reason for termination ==
> ** {timeout,{gen_server,call,[thetime,gettime]}}
>
> =CRASH REPORT==== 2012-10-09 05:37:04 UTC ===
>   crasher:
>     initial call: process_listener:-init/1-fun-2-/0
>     pid: <0.12376.513>
>     registered_name: []
>     exception exit: {timeout,{gen_server,call,[thetime,gettime]}}
>       in function  gen_server:terminate/6
>     ancestors: [incoming_req_processor,incoming_sup,top_process_sup,
>                   <0.52.0>]
>     messages: []
>     links: []
>     dictionary: [{random_seed,{23375,22820,17046}}]
>     trap_exit: true
>     status: running
>     heap_size: 6765
>     stack_size: 24
>     reductions: 1646842
>   neighbours:
>
> I am seeing a lot of these messages in my Crash Reports. Once this reaches this it goes into this crash loop for quite a while. I am not sure how to debug this error. These timeouts are really annoying. Can some one help me understand the root cause of this?
>
> Why does my genserver calls are facing timeouts ? Is it that my erlang VM is slow if so why ? How can i debug this issue to get to the root cause of it ? 
>
If you look at gen_server:call/2 at http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html
it shows the default Timeout is 5000 milliseconds (5 seconds).  Your gen_server process must have been processing for longer than 5 seconds while a gen_server:call/2 message was waiting in the process message queue, to cause the timeout exception.  So, it isn't the Erlang VM being slow, it is just an Erlang process that is overloaded (i.e., the "thetime" registered process).



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/attachments/20121011/35f39a9c/attachment.htm>