There is/are 1 thread(s) in total in the server that may be hung - websphere

Question

I have started facing WAR start up issue on WAS 8.5, which was working fine previously, no activity performed on server, db or network side.
Please help
9/17 12:40:34:480 UTC] 00000084 FfdcProvider W com.ibm.ws.ffdc.impl.FfdcProvider logIncident FFDC1003I: FFDC Incident emitted on /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01/logs/ffdc/Pricing02aSrv01_af9c6497_17.06.09_12.40.34.4787659752434117375945.txtcom.ibm.ws.classloader.ClassLoaderUtils.addDependents 246
[6/9/17 12:52:51:251 UTC] 0000008c ThreadMonitor W WSVR0605W: Thread "Default : 6" (00000084) has been active for 736898 milliseconds and may be hung. There is/are 1 thread(s) in total in the server that may be hung.
at java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead0(Native Method)
at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java:161)
at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java:132)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.fill(BufferedInputStream.java:246)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read1(BufferedInputStream.java:286)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(BufferedInputStream.java:345)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTPHeader(HttpClient.java:662)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTP(HttpClient.java:608)
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1334)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.setupCurrentEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.startEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.startDTDEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDTDScannerImpl.setInputSource(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl$DTDDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at com.ibm.ws.beanvalidation.JaxbBvalUnmarshaller.doUnmarshal(JaxbBvalUnmarshaller.java:142)
at com.ibm.ws.beanvalidation.JaxbBvalUnmarshaller.unmarshal(JaxbBvalUnmarshaller.java:99)
at com.ibm.ws.beanvalidation.BeanValidationServiceImpl.getValidatorFactory(BeanValidationServiceImpl.java:280)
at com.ibm.ws.beanvalidation.BeanValidationMetaDataListener.metaDataCreated(BeanValidationMetaDataListener.java:222)
at com.ibm.ws.beanvalidation.BeanValidationMetaDataListener.metaDataCreated(BeanValidationMetaDataListener.java:136)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.MetaDataMgrImpl.fireMetaDataCreated(MetaDataMgrImpl.java:279)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.MetaDataMgrImpl.fireMetaDataCreated(MetaDataMgrImpl.java:262)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.metadata.WebMetaDataFactory.createMetaData(WebMetaDataFactory.java:244)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.MetaDataMgrImpl.createMetaDataFromFactories(MetaDataMgrImpl.java:228)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.MetaDataMgrImpl.createMetaData(MetaDataMgrImpl.java:411)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedModuleImpl.start(DeployedModuleImpl.java:631)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedApplicationImpl.start(DeployedApplicationImpl.java:968)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.startApplication(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:774)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.startApplicationDynamically(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:1374)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.start(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:2179)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.start(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:445)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitImpl.start(CompositionUnitImpl.java:123)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.start(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:388)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.access$500(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:116)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl$1.run(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:663)
at com.ibm.ws.security.auth.ContextManagerImpl.runAs(ContextManagerImpl.java:5474)
at com.ibm.ws.security.auth.ContextManagerImpl.runAsSystem(ContextManagerImpl.java:5600)
at com.ibm.ws.security.core.SecurityContext.runAsSystem(SecurityContext.java:255)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.startCompositionUnit(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:677)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.startCompositionUnit(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:621)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.startApplication(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:1266)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:88)
at 

Answer 1

This seems to be a very close match to a known bug;
PM93744: APP START DELAY WHEN BEAN VALIDATION ATTEMPTS TO VALIDATE ANY VALIDATION.XML EVEN IF IT'S NOT INTENDED FOR BEAN VALIDATION
If you compare stack trace on bug report to yours, you may see both indicate BeanValidationService attempting an unsuccessful outbound http connection. It seems like server is trying to validate an XML file, and trying to fetch DTD from internet. If you have recently changed network configuration for your server (installed/changed a proxy server in between, or a firewall change etc.), this may have caused a previously working connection attempt to fail now.
This was fixed in 8.5.5.1 (fix pack1 for 8.5.5), so you must update to this version or a more recent one.