Re: gnats/133

[Milan Zamazal]

[gnats-devel@: This is a problem with pending lock files in GNATS 3.113,
the original PR and my answer is at the end below.]

>>>>> "SP" == Sarang Padalkar <address@hidden> writes:
 
    SP>  We seem to be running into the same problem frequently (once a
    SP> week).  Does anybody know what triggers this problem?

I don't and would be very interested in it.

Do you use Gnatsweb for accessing the affected databases?

    SP> Are there any known workarounds?  Is it ok for me to just delete
    SP> this file whenever I see it (being around for more than say 10
    SP> minutes)?

If Gnatsweb locks the database just for submitting the edited problem (I
don't know whether it works this way), then this should be a safe
workaround.

BTW, Yngve, you said it happens in *one* of your databases.  Is it
really so and if yes, is the database special in some aspect?

Regards,

Milan Zamazal

[The original report and my answer follows.]

>>>>> "ys" == yngve svendsen <address@hidden> writes:

    ys> Gnats seems to forget about removing the gnats.lock file in the
    ys> gnats-adm directory. This has happened on a couple of occasions
    ys> in one of our Gnats databases. The symptoms are that people are
    ys> unable to make any edits to any of the PRs in the database, and
    ys> since it often takes some time before people report this, we
    ys> haven't been able to find out how to reproduce the problem.

I've observed a similar problem when we were using GNATS 3.113 in my
previous work.  However, I think it has never happen in the use of GNATS
3.113 in the company I work now.

I have the following hypotheses how this can happen:

- A web operation can finish for some reason (stopped browser operation
  or something like that) and the CGI script is stopped before it
  unlocks the database.  I don't know whether this can really happen,
  but it's the only explanation I had for the problems I experienced
  (the problems always happened during problem editing by some quite
  stupid users, they could do something weird).

- gnatsd crashes during Gnatsweb<->gnatsd communication.  When I was
  playing with gnatsd from GNATS 4, it stopped several times
  unexpectedly.  However, I don't know what Gnatsweb would do in such a
  case, maybe it reacts differently and this hypothesis is invalid.

Unfortunately, I don't know what to do with the lock problem, unless you
can find out more information about the problem.

Regards,

Milan Zamazal