Using Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS, with up-to-date, self-compiled master.
When I run
./bitcoind -regtest -whitebind=bla
I expect a clean shutdown with Error: Cannot resolve -whitebind address: 'bla'.
However sometimes my node doesn't stop and freezes (shutdown never finishes).
This happens ~30% of the time for me, both on testnet and regtest.

I believe that this is because torControlThread.join(); never returns if it the thread is stopped right after its creation - it is started right before the whitebind part in AppInitMain(). If I insert a sleep before whitebind parameters are processed in Step 12 of AppInitMain() (or if I just disable the TorControl thread) the error does not occur.

Could someone try to reproduce? I encountered this testing #16248, but it is not restricted to this branch.