apache/cassandra · error · RuntimeException

Failed to execute stress action

Error message

Failed to execute stress action

What it means

StressAction.run orchestrates a whole stress run (threads, op distribution, timing). At the end it prints SUCCESS or FAILURE and, if the measured run was not successful (operations failed, thread errors, or the run loop reported failure), throws RuntimeException('Failed to execute stress action'). It is the top-level signal that the stress run did not complete cleanly; the real cause is usually printed earlier by per-thread exception reporting.

Source

Thrown at tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/StressAction.java:103

        if (settings.rate.opsPerSecond > 0)
            rateLimiter = new UniformRateLimiter(settings.rate.opsPerSecond);

        boolean success;
        if (settings.rate.minThreads > 0)
            success = runMulti(settings.rate.auto, rateLimiter);
        else
            success = null != run(settings.command.getFactory(settings), settings.rate.threadCount, settings.command.count,
                                  settings.command.duration, rateLimiter, settings.command.durationUnits, output, false);

        if (success)
            output.println("END");
        else
            output.println("FAILURE");

        settings.disconnect();

        if (!success)
            throw new RuntimeException("Failed to execute stress action");
    }

    // type provided separately to support recursive call for mixed command with each command type it is performing
    private void warmup(OpDistributionFactory operations)
    {
        // do 25% of iterations as warmup but no more than 50k (by default hotspot compiles methods after 10k invocations)
        int iterations = (settings.command.count >= 0
                          ? Math.min(50000, (int)(settings.command.count * 0.25))
                          : 50000) * settings.node.nodes.size();
        if (iterations <= 0) return;

        int threads = 100;

        if (settings.rate.maxThreads > 0)
            threads = Math.min(threads, settings.rate.maxThreads);
        if (settings.rate.threadCount > 0)
            threads = Math.min(threads, settings.rate.threadCount);

View on GitHub (pinned to 88fd0f6a0e)

Solutions

1. Read the earlier per-thread stack traces/exception messages in the stress output to find the root failure.
2. Re-run with relaxed error settings (--errors ignore) or fewer threads/rate to rule out overload.
3. Verify the schema matches the stress profile (run the profile's schema DDL) and that all nodes are UP.
4. Catch RuntimeException in the harness invoking StressAction and treat it as a non-zero exit with diagnostics.

Example fix

// before
// run aborts silently with 'Failed to execute stress action' only
// after
try { stressAction.run(); } catch (RuntimeException e) { e.printStackTrace(); checkThreadErrors(); }

// pre-flight the cluster before the full run:
// 1) all nodes UP  2) schema created  3) credentials valid
// e.g. cqlsh -u user -p pass -e "SELECT now() FROM system.local"

try {
    stressAction.run();
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
    if ("Failed to execute stress action".equals(e.getMessage())) {
        reportThreadErrors(); // parse earlier per-thread output for root cause
    } else throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: run(single, ...) returns success=false for the main measurement phase — e.g. any worker thread hit an operation error (IOException from Operation.error), an uncaught exception in a stress thread, or the run was interrupted/failing — so StressAction throws RuntimeException at line 103.

Common situations: Cluster overloaded or down during the run; stress profile statements failing against the schema; key too small/large causing coordinator errors; running multiple stress instances causing timeouts.

Understand the failure class

Background: 'Something went wrong' / 'Request failed (500)' / 'HTTP error! status: 404' — what failed HTTP requests actually mean and how to find the real cause — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

• Failed to execute warmup
• CIDR group '%s' doesn't exists
• <RuntimeException message> for ks: <keyspace>, table: <table
• Error starting native transport:
• Table {tableName} does not exist in keyspace {keyspace}

AI-assisted analysis of apache/cassandra@88fd0f6a0e (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2ad0f8d9bea60368. Report an issue: GitHub.