Load average ×2 since last upgrade

Contribute Bug

AI-generated summary

A user reports that after upgrading to 2025.12.0-latest, their Discourse forum experienced increased load average and performance issues. The load average doubled from under 0.1 to over 0.2, coinciding with the upgrade. The user identifies the ActivityPub plugin as the cause, as disabling it reduced the load back to normal levels Julien_Palard. They also encountered a DistributedMutex error related to ActivityPub processing, which was not present before the upgrade Julien_Palard. A backtrace was provided, showing the issue occurs in the discourse-activity-pub plugin’s job processing. The user notes that the load and error have since resolved, but the issue appears to be tied to the ActivityPub plugin in the 2025.12 release Julien_Palard. Another user, pmusaraj, asks for further details on the error, indicating it may be a broader issue.

1

I upgraded to 2025.12.0-latest from a release that was not calver yet (how to know exactly? I don’t remember the version).

So yes I skipped over 2025.11 (was not proposed by the Discourse upgrade page), maybe a bug due to the change in release numbering? I don’t know. Anyway I upgraded.

It went well but right after the upgrade the forum was particularly slow.

A few hours later it felt less slow but I noticed a difference in the load average:

load-month
load-month497×275 19.9 KB

It bumped from less than 0.1 to more than 0.2. The rise is exactly from the moment I did the upgrade.

Am I alone noticing this?

1 Like
2

Hum I’m seeing an error in the logs that was not present before the upgrade:

DistributedMutex("activity_pub_process_[...]"): held for too long, expected max: 120 secs, took an extra 27 secs

Maybe it is related.

1 Like
3

Today I tried disabling ActivityPub to see if loads get back at the pre-upgrade level, and it does.

So enabling activity pub more than doubles my load average since around 2025-11 / 2025-12, there’s probably some kind of issue there.

Here’s the load graph, I disabled the plugin at 16h48, see the drop:

load-day
load-day497×275 20.5 KB

3 Likes
5

Load went back to normal on 2025-12-20 around 10 PM UTC+1, and I do no longer see the DistributedMutex held for too long error…

3 Likes
6

Load went back to normal with ActivityPub enabled again?

Any chance you can share a backtrace for this error? I am not seeing it on two instances that we have running with the plugin enabled.

7

Yes, here it is:

Message

DistributedMutex("activity_pub_process_4cce076d079ee338eb556919769918f9"): held for too long, expected max: 120 secs, took an extra 39 secs

Backtrace

/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/activesupport-8.0.4/lib/active_support/broadcast_logger.rb:218:in `block in dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/activesupport-8.0.4/lib/active_support/broadcast_logger.rb:217:in `map'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/activesupport-8.0.4/lib/active_support/broadcast_logger.rb:217:in `dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/activesupport-8.0.4/lib/active_support/broadcast_logger.rb:129:in `warn'
/var/www/discourse/lib/distributed_mutex.rb:103:in `warn'
/var/www/discourse/lib/distributed_mutex.rb:57:in `block in synchronize'
/var/www/discourse/lib/distributed_mutex.rb:49:in `synchronize'
/var/www/discourse/lib/distributed_mutex.rb:49:in `synchronize'
/var/www/discourse/lib/distributed_mutex.rb:34:in `synchronize'
/var/www/discourse/plugins/discourse-activity-pub/app/jobs/regular/discourse_activity_pub/process.rb:9:in `execute'
/var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:318:in `block (2 levels) in perform'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/rails_multisite-7.0.0/lib/rails_multisite/connection_management/null_instance.rb:49:in `with_connection'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/rails_multisite-7.0.0/lib/rails_multisite/connection_management.rb:17:in `with_connection'
/var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:305:in `block in perform'
/var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:301:in `each'
/var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:301:in `perform'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:220:in `execute_job'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:185:in `block (4 levels) in process'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:180:in `traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:183:in `block in traverse'
/var/www/discourse/lib/sidekiq/suppress_user_email_errors.rb:6:in `call'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:182:in `traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:183:in `block in traverse'
/var/www/discourse/lib/sidekiq/discourse_event.rb:6:in `call'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:182:in `traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:183:in `block in traverse'
/var/www/discourse/lib/sidekiq/pausable.rb:131:in `call'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:182:in `traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:183:in `block in traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/job/interrupt_handler.rb:9:in `call'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:182:in `traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:183:in `block in traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/metrics/tracking.rb:26:in `track'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/metrics/tracking.rb:134:in `call'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:182:in `traverse'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/middleware/chain.rb:173:in `invoke'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:184:in `block (3 levels) in process'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:145:in `block (6 levels) in dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/job_retry.rb:118:in `local'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:144:in `block (5 levels) in dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/config.rb:39:in `block in <class:Config>'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:139:in `block (4 levels) in dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:281:in `stats'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:134:in `block (3 levels) in dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/job_logger.rb:15:in `call'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:133:in `block (2 levels) in dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/job_retry.rb:85:in `global'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:132:in `block in dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/job_logger.rb:40:in `prepare'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:131:in `dispatch'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:183:in `block (2 levels) in process'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:182:in `handle_interrupt'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:182:in `block in process'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:181:in `handle_interrupt'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:181:in `process'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:86:in `process_one'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/processor.rb:76:in `run'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/component.rb:10:in `watchdog'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/sidekiq-7.3.9/lib/sidekiq/component.rb:19:in `block in safe_thread'
1 Like