Last modified: 2014-10-24 14:26:52 UTC
Seen in automated tests in beta labs 11 May and 12 May (and occasionally earlier). Browser encounters a modal dialog saying "Error loading data from server: readonly. The wiki is currently in read-only mode. Would you like to retry?" The wiki is almost certainly not in read-only mode. This may not actually be a VE error, I think it's coming from line 337 of ve.init.mw.ViewPageTarget.js, but I haven't tracked it to whatever is feeding the "read-only" status message to VE.
Created attachment 15357 [details] read-only status modal dialog in VE
Are you absolutely sure that Beta Labs wasn't catching up from too many edits? The site automatically puts itself into "read only" mode for a few seconds from time to time… Either way, this is a deployment-prep issue.
I've never seen this modal dialog or this error message under any circumstances other than when editing with VE. I am curious as to the root cause though, I've never heard of a wiki automatically putting itself into read-only mode.
(11:08:16 AM) chrismcmahon: James_F: I'm sure the read-only was not VE itself, but I do wonder if you've ever seen that msg. in VE or know what might cause it. (11:09:16 AM) James_F: chrismcmahon: It happens locally when I lock the DB manually, and I've seen it when wikis are under high load in production due to the auto-lock. (11:09:31 AM) James_F: chrismcmahon: I believe it happens only in extremes, when master is lagging with load. (11:10:29 AM) chrismcmahon: James_F: thanks, that's helpful, I've never seen that. I can't imagine what would cause that kind of load in beta labs at that hour though.
There is a few errors such as: Mon May 12 5:32:25 UTC 2014 deployment-apache01 testwiki Error connecting to 10.68.17.94: :real_connect(): (42000/1049): Unknown database 'testwikidatawiki' Mon May 12 5:32:25 UTC 2014 deployment-apache01 testwiki Connection error: No working slave server: Unknown error (10.68.17.94) Do you have an example of a failing build ? Will help find the exact time it happened and thus to investigate around that date/time.
Several failed builds with this error over the last few days, this is the most recent from last night 13 May: https://wmf.ci.cloudbees.com/job/VisualEditor-en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org-linux-chrome/500/
It seems the main issue was the database lag that would cause MediaWiki to switch readonly. The threshold has been raised a few months ago and I have not heard of "beta is read only" issues since. Assuming this bug is fixed.
