A participant reported to me today an error message that I have not encountered before. It is quite long and refers to an issue with gitlab:
“Unfortunately we encountered the following error: when flushing participant’s log for experiment, when uploading participant’s log for experiment, when saving logs from a previously opened session on the server. File exists. Another git process seems to be running in this repository, e.g. an editor opened by git commit’. Please make sure all processes are terminated then try again. If it still fails, a git process may have crashed in this repositroy earlier: remove the file manually to continue. Try to run the experiment again. If the error persists, contact the experiment designer.”
Interestingly, the participant’s data seem to have saved with no problem. I have another participant’s data file with the same timestamp. Is it possible this occurred because both files were trying to save simultaneously? Is there any reason to think that the data file should not be trusted? I’d appreciate any help to troubleshoot this and make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’ve run many participants in this study and this is the first I’ve seen this outcome.
when flushing participant’s logs for experiment: […]
when uploading participant’s logs for experiment: […]
when saving logs from a previously opened session on the server
unable to push logs file: […].log to GitLab repository: Cmd(‘git’) failed due to: exit code(128) cmdline: git add […].log.gz stderr: ‘fatal: Unable to create ‘[…]/.git/index.lock’: File exists. Another git process seems to be running in this repository, e.g. an editor opened by ‘git commit’. Please make sure all processes are terminated then try again. If it still fails, a git process may have crashed in this repository earlier: remove the file manually to continue.’
Try to run the experiment again. If the error persists, contact the experiment designer.
About 140 participants completed the experiment, and only 1 reported this error, which suggests an unusual (but not impossible) race condition. Although in this case (like the OP) the data file was saved successfully (only the log failed to save), there are other postings that suggests data may be lost this way: 12
Perhaps git should wait a second or so for the lock to free before giving up?
We also had the same thing happen to us and ended up losing a lot of money due to this error. Has there been any resolution of how to solve it?
"Unfortunately we encountered the following error:
when flushing participant’s logs for experiment: eldarlabccl/v4_reward_onlyv2
when uploading participant’s log for experiment: eldarlabccl/v4_reward_onlyv2
when saving logs from a previously opened session on the server
unable to push logs file: 256_V4_reward_onlyV2_2023-07-19_13h28.48.736.log to GitLab repository: Cmd(‘git’) failed due to: exit code(128) cmdline: git add /var/www/pavlovia.org/run/eldarlabccl/v4_reward_onlyv2/data//256_V4_reward_onlyV2_2023-07-19_13h28.48.736.log.gz stderr: ‘fatal: Unable to create ‘/data/run/eldarlabccl/v4_reward_onlyv2/.git/index.lock’: File exists. Another git process seems to be running in this repository, e.g. an editor opened by ‘git commit’. Please make sure all processes are terminated then try again. If it still fails, a git process may have crashed in this repository earlier: remove the file manually to continue.’
I am very sorry to read that you were affected by this problem.
I previously fixed a similar issue that was hindering the uploading of results. I applied the same fix to the uploading of logs at the time but it appears that, on rare occasions, a race condition occurs. This is indeed what you have encountered. I have now taken care of that race condition and the issue should not happen again.
For the record, those two fixes should soon become unnecessary. We will soon be moving to a new server, for which I have redesigned the uploading and pushing of results and logs. It should prevent the problem from happening in the first place so there won’t be a need for a post-hoc fix.
Best wishes,