# Stalled cache updating - what does it mean?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/stalled-cache-updating-what-does-it-mean/237986>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [December 10, 2013, 11:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/stalled-cache-updating-what-does-it-mean/237986 "2013-12-10T11:25:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![musicdenotation](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@musicdenotation](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/musicdenotation)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 11:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/stalled-cache-updating-what-does-it-mean/237986/1 "2013-12-10T11:25:24Z")

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Hello,  
I have a pretty basic PHP / fastcgi setup with a fastcgi cache as  
follows:

fastcgi\_cache\_key “$scheme$request\_method$host$request\_uri”;  
fastcgi\_cache\_lock on;  
fastcgi\_cache\_bypass $skip\_cache;  
fastcgi\_no\_cache $skip\_cache;  
fastcgi\_cache MAINCACHE;  
fastcgi\_cache\_valid 5m;

I’m using nginx from the [nginx.org](http://nginx.org) Debian repository and building from  
source, adding the geoip and ngx\_cache\_purge modules.

nginx version: nginx/1.5.7  
built by gcc 4.7.2 (Debian 4.7.2-5)  
TLS SNI support enabled

Every so often I’ll get a couple of lines in the log like the following:

2013/12/09 15:59:34 [alert] 14218#0: \*10450047 stalled cache updating,  
error:0 while closing request, client: x.236.101.34, server:  
x.x.101.37:80  
2013/12/09 15:59:34 [alert] 14218#0: \*10450055 stalled cache updating,  
error:0 while closing request, client: x.236.101.34, server:  
x.x.101.37:80  
2013/12/09 15:59:34 [alert] 14218#0: \*10450099 stalled cache updating,  
error:0 while closing request, client: x.236.101.34, server:  
x.x.101.37:80

This usually occurs after a client requests a script which issues some  
internal requests to the site itself (wp-cron).

As it’s log level alert, it seems serious, but I can’t seem to notice  
anything wrong as a result. What exactly does this alert mean and is it  
something I need to be worried about? I’ve since moved the script to an  
offline cron job to see if this helps, but I’m still curious exactly  
what  
this means.

Thanks,

Rich.

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**Author:** ![indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/indigoi)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 11:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/stalled-cache-updating-what-does-it-mean/237986/2 "2013-12-10T11:58:42Z")

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Hello!

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 11:24:33AM +0100, Richard S. wrote:

> I’m using nginx from the [nginx.org](http://nginx.org) Debian repository and building from  
> 2013/12/09 15:59:34 [alert] 14218#0: \*10450055 stalled cache updating,  
> offline cron job to see if this helps, but I’m still curious exactly what  
> this means.

The message means that nginx detected an internal problem - the  
cache cleanup callback was called on a request termination, and  
the r-\>cache-\>updating flag, which should be cleared at this  
point, is still set. User-visible results are most likely a cache  
item which will not be updated, or a cache lock which will apear  
to be always set (and requests to a cache item only handled only  
after a timeout).

I would suggest to test if you are able to reproduce the problem  
without 3rd party modules. If you are, it would be interesting to  
see full configuration and a debug log, see  
[Debugging | NGINX](http://wiki.nginx.org/Debugging).

–  
Maxim D.  
[http://nginx.org/](http://nginx.org/)