# Unlogged error while failing to merge users

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/unlogged-error-while-failing-to-merge-users/156522
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** merge-user
**Created:** [July 1, 2020, 9:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/unlogged-error-while-failing-to-merge-users/156522 "2020-07-01T21:44:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![mcdanlj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mcdanlj/32/131829_2.png) [@mcdanlj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcdanlj)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 9:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/unlogged-error-while-failing-to-merge-users/156522/1 "2020-07-01T21:44:45Z")

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I have one person who for historical reasons has two identities on my forum, and (with permission) I’m trying to merge them. After maybe 15 seconds after typing the unlock “transfer” phrase and starting the merge, I get an error box:

> There was an error while merging the users.

There’s no error in the error log in the UI. I see no record of this in the rails log on the filesystem. What logs might I look in to find the source of the problem?

I’m up to date as of this morning, 093ee1d80c269afd00ba1341a3e71eb97e4ce7f1

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### Author: ![simon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/simon/32/339122_2.png) [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [July 2, 2020, 4:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/unlogged-error-while-failing-to-merge-users/156522/2 "2020-07-02T16:51:09Z")

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> [@mcdanlj](#):
>
> After maybe 15 seconds after typing the unlock “transfer” phrase and starting the merge, I get an error box:
> 
> > There was an error while merging the users.

My guess is that the problem is that the users you are trying to merge have a lot of activity on the forum. Merging users through the UI can timeout in these cases. This is a known problem that we are planning to fix.

You may have to merge the users by running the `rake users:merge` task from your site’s backend. Details about how to do that are here: [Rake task for merging users](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rake-task-for-merging-users/89086).

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### Author: ![mcdanlj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mcdanlj/32/131829_2.png) [@mcdanlj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcdanlj)
#### Post date: [July 2, 2020, 5:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/unlogged-error-while-failing-to-merge-users/156522/3 "2020-07-02T17:51:00Z")

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Ah thank you! I had been merging from the rake task for months, and didn’t realize the results could be different. Much appreciated!

Also, confirmed that it worked. ☺

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### Author: ![Paul\_King](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/paul_king/32/165426_2.png) [@Paul\_King](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Paul_King)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2020, 5:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/unlogged-error-while-failing-to-merge-users/156522/4 "2020-07-15T05:31:42Z")

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> [@simon](#):
>
> My guess is that the problem is that the users you are trying to merge have a lot of activity on the forum. Merging users through the UI can timeout in these cases. This is a known problem that we are planning to fix.
> 
> You may have to merge the users by running the `rake users:merge` task from your site’s backend. Details about how to do that are here: [Rake task for merging users](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rake-task-for-merging-users/89086).

I struck the issue too - but before reading this, found that simply repeating a couple of times seemed to resolve the error (or at least resulted in completion without any error message). Perhaps a few more posts get migrated with each attempt, until completion occurs before timeout?

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### Author: ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/system/32/443519_2.png) [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2020, 5:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/unlogged-error-while-failing-to-merge-users/156522/5 "2020-08-14T05:42:29Z")

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