OpenConext / OpenConext/OpenConext-engineblock
Global database lock inhibits reads after a while
Open
Nobody has claimed this yet.
needs-input
needs-refinement
robustness
- Dominant language
- PHP
- Stars
- 17
- Forks
- 25
- Avg merge
- 4d 1h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 1
Description
See SURFconext Incident 2026-08-25. Short summary:
- database restore in unrelated database schema cause global (write) lock in Galera
- this cause consent-writes to block
- after a while. all database connections are busy (waiting of the lock for writes)
- then also simply authentications (requiring only reads) fail.
Can this be improved? For example by decreasing lock-timeouts?
Contributor guide
No contributing guide indexed for this repository
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by tracing how consent writes and authentication reads use database connections during a Galera global write lock, then reproduce the incident scenario and measure lock and connection timeouts. Done means read-only authentication remains available while unrelated writes are blocked, with regression coverage for the timeout behavior.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- php
- Domain
- authentication, backend, databases
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100