Timer starts twice when it should start only once

[Egil Poma]

I have a Timer that runs as a deamon. To this Timer I add one single TimerTask to run each 60 sec. The Timer is instantiated by the init() method of a servlet at application startup.

The problems is that the Timer starts TWO different threads with the TimerTask. Both threads run once every 60 sec, and simingly with about 5 seconds between them.

This is very strange because as far as I can see my code should only start ONE thread. What might be wrong? What can I do to make sure the timer only starts ONE thread?

Here's my code (a bit simplified):

// Servlet that starts the Timer on application startup and destroys it on application end
public class CronJobsServlet extends HttpServlet {
private MailPoller mailPoller;
 
public void init(ServletConfig sc) throws ServletException {
mailPoller = new MailPoller();
}
 
public void destroy() {
if (mailPoller != null) {
mailPoller.getTimer().cancel();
mailPoller = null;
}
}
}
 
// Class that contains the Timer
public class MailPoller {
private Timer timer;
 
public MailPoller() {
timer = new Timer(true); // run Timer as deamon
MailPollerTask task = new MailPollerTask(new MailPollerWorker());
try {
timer.schedule(task, 60000, 60000);
} catch (Exception e) {
// error handling
}
}
 
public Timer getTimer() {
return this.timer;
}
}
 
// The TimerTask
public class MailPollerTask extends TimerTask {
private MailPollerWorker worker;
 
public MailPollerTask(MailPollerWorker worker) {
this.worker = worker;
}
 
public void run() {
this.worker.pollEmail();
}
}
 
// The "worker"
public class MailPollerWorker {
public MailPollerWorker() {
super();
}
 
public void pollEmail() {
// do something
}
}

This should be a fairly simple setup of a Timer, and I can't understand why it would start two separate threads with the TimerTask!?

As a note I can mention that in my application there's another Timer in another class (which has nothing to do with this class). It is possible to have more than one Timer within the same JVM, right?

Hope somone can help!
[ November 19, 2006: Message edited by: Egil Poma ]

[Egil Poma]

I put some more debug statements into the code, and the servlet init method gets run twice when the application starts up (tomcat).

How on earth can that be?

[Egil Poma]

I found out why the init metod gets run twice ; I'm running tomcat and apache connected, and that causes all init methods to be run twice.

As described here:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/tomcat-users/200204.mbox/[e-mail]%3E

So I'm thinking to create a static instance of the MailPoller class in a different class, and then just check if it's null in the init method before making an instance of it.

But will making a static instance of the MailPoller be thread safe?