java
10 minJava Thread Dumps: Find Deadlocks, Starvation, and Lock Contention
Use repeated thread dumps and thread-state patterns to distinguish deadlocks from slow dependencies, starvation, and excessive synchronization.
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databases
10 minDatabase Locks and Isolation: Diagnose Blocking, Deadlocks, and Retries
Understand transaction conflicts, lock waits, isolation anomalies, and safe retry boundaries across relational databases.
databases
8 minPostgreSQL concurrent indexes: reason about locks, retries, and invalid states
Use concurrent index builds without assuming they are lock-free or all-or-nothing.
unix
9 minLinux Disk Full Errors: Blocks, Inodes, Deleted Files, and Safe Cleanup
Diagnose ENOSPC when disk usage looks confusing, including exhausted inodes and deleted files still held open.
distributed systems
8 minCausal order: what a logical clock can and cannot tell you
Distinguish event causality from wall-clock order with Lamport and vector clocks.
java
10 minJava Exception Debugging: Trace the Root Cause and Fix the Boundary
A practical method for investigating wrapped exceptions, null failures, resource exhaustion, and misleading catch blocks in JVM services.
Q&A
Q&AHow do you troubleshoot high thread contention in Java?
Use repeated thread dumps and lock profiling to locate hot locks, then reduce serialization safely.
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Capture repeated thread dumps and identify many threads blocked on the same owner or monitor. Use a profiler or JFR lock events to quantify contention and critical-section time. Reduce lock scope, shard independent state, batch updates, or use concurrent primitives only when they preserve the invariant; verify throughput and correctness under representative load.
Q&A
Q&AWhat does vector-clock incomparability represent?
Concurrent histories under the vector clock identity and propagation model.
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If neither vector is component-wise less than the other, neither history contains all represented knowledge of the other. This does not establish physical-time order or choose a globally agreed winner.