On a project I’ve been working on, I’ve recently seen several ADOdb cache write errors being thrown. When searching Google for a possible cause I didn’t find anything, so I thought I’d put this bread crumb out there for any others who might be experiencing the same problem.

ADOdb is a database abstraction library for PHP and Python. I’m working in PHP in this case.

The cache write error is being thrown when the project is under high load. After much investigation, it appears that this is a race condition within ADOdb when it is being used concurrently and the cache is enabled.

Here’s the scenario:

The cache expires. Then two users attempt to access the service which makes a call to ADOdb to access the database. Both users make a request that executes the same SQL query with the same variables set. Two calls to the ADOdb cache execute function are made. Since the cache is expired, the cache execute function then calls the ADOdb cache write function. The cache write function uses the SQL query to generate a hash that determines the proper cache file to write to. Since both requests generated the same SQL query, each request attempts to write to the same file. The cache write function uses flock(), a PHP file locking function , to lock the cache file. One request will win the lock and successfully write the cache file. The other will fail to win the lock. This will cause the cache write function to return false. On seeing the return value of false, the cache execute function will then throw the cache write error for the user that made the request that failed to acquire the lock. This scenario can potentially play out every time the cache expires and two users make the same request concurrently.

I have not been able to reproduce the error during testing, but I do believe this is what is happening in this instance.

I recommend that if you want to examine this further and you’re using ADOdb with PHP, that you read the php.net page on flock(), as there is a lot of information on how flock() works and what other users have experienced.

I haven’t yet developed a good solution to prevent these cache write errors, so I’m open to suggestions. Although it maybe something that doesn’t need a solution and can safely be ignored.