KafkaSpout fail method - how to distinguish between exception and timeout?

["Tao, Jing" <jt...@webmd.net>]

Hello,

I am using KafkaSpout from storm-kafka-0.8-plus:0.4.0.jar.  The fail method of this Spout replays the message infinitely till the tuple somehow gets processed successfully.  Instead of replaying tuples that caused exceptions, I want to log and skip them.  However, if a tuple failed due to a timeout (not due to an exception), then I do want to replay it.  How can I do this?

Would I have to have a try/catch block in each bolt to catch any runtime exceptions and log the error but ack the tuple anyway?  Or is there a better way to distinguish between an exception failure vs a timeout failure?

Thanks,
Jing