# Notifications stuck on non-existing users due to follow plugin
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 7:29am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811 "2019-08-26T07:29:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@bartv](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bartv)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 7:29am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/1 "2019-08-26T07:29:47Z")
Hi,
My users are reporting an issue where they will keep getting the same notification for new posts. I’ve tracked it back to a non-existing user, and it seems Sidekiq keeps retrying these notifications which results in the these people getting the notification multiple times.
I have killed these retries in the past, but they’ll resurface after a while. Shouldn’t they just ‘give up’ and not retry?
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 7:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/2 "2019-08-26T07:49:24Z")
This is odd for sure. Can you sweep the DB searching for user\_id 44269, maybe when we nuke the user record we left it around in some tables and this is triggering the issue.
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### Author:  [@bartv](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bartv)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 7:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/3 "2019-08-26T07:50:38Z")
‘Sweep’? Is there a quick way to do that, or do I need to inspect every table separately?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 7:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/4 "2019-08-26T07:55:26Z")
You would need a script for it. I would start though by looking at `topic_users`
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### Author:  [@bartv](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bartv)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 7:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/5 "2019-08-26T07:57:54Z")
Done; it returns nothing. Any other tables that could trigger this?
```sql
select *
from topic_users
where user_id = 44269
```
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 8:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/6 "2019-08-26T08:00:42Z")
Very weird… maybe the user is watching all posts … had mailing list mode enabled and now has orphan records for watching stuff.
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### Author:  [@bartv](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bartv)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 8:18am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/7 "2019-08-26T08:18:50Z")
I looked in the [Data Explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566?silent=true) but can’t find anything relevant. Do you have other suggestions where I can look?
I’m traveling this week, but when I’m back I can download a DB dump and do a search for this value too, I suppose.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [26 באוגוסט, 2019, 3:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/8 "2019-08-26T15:02:36Z")
Do you have any third party plugins installed?
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### Author:  [@bartv](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bartv)
#### Post date: [27 באוגוסט, 2019, 7:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/9 "2019-08-27T07:21:36Z")
Yes, a few. But I’ll dive into the database first before disabling anything on my production box.
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### Author:  [@bartv](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bartv)
#### Post date: [24 בספטמבר, 2019, 6:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/10 "2019-09-24T06:31:48Z")
I think I tracked this down to the [Follow plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/follow-plugin/110579/41).
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [24 בספטמבר, 2019, 5:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-stuck-on-non-existing-users-due-to-follow-plugin/126811/11 "2019-09-24T17:49:59Z")