Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.Problem/Motivation
Backport of #2348137: Enable WAL journal mode by default for SQLite database
Note present D7 minimum requirement:
Drupal 7 supports SQLite 3.3.7 or higher.
...whereas WAL was introduced in SQLite 3.7.0.
Hopefully WAL may fix some of the current test failures which appear to be down to locking / concurrency issues e.g.
PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 5 database is locked in /var/www/html/includes/database/prefetch.inc:168
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/html/includes/database/prefetch.inc(168): PDOStatement->execute(Array)
#1 /var/www/html/includes/database/sqlite/database.inc(481): DatabaseStatementPrefetch->execute(Array, Array)
#2 /var/www/html/includes/database/database.inc(724): DatabaseStatement_sqlite->execute(Array, Array)
#3 /var/www/html/includes/database/query.inc(644): DatabaseConnection->query('INSERT INTO {si...', Array, Array)
Note that initially running core tests in SQLite depends on (the D7 backport of #1713332: The SQLite database driver fails to drop simpletest tables - it's fairly pointless trying to run tests without that patch.
Steps to reproduce
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Proposed resolution
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Remaining tasks
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User interface changes
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API changes
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Data model changes
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Release notes snippet
tbc
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #8 | 3172877-8.patch | 1.03 KB | mcdruid |
| #5 | 3172877-5.patch | 15.78 KB | mcdruid |
| #5 | interdiff-3172877-3-5.txt | 1.21 KB | mcdruid |
| #3 | 3172877-3.patch | 14.69 KB | mcdruid |
| #3 | interdiff-1713332-92-3172877-3.txt | 959 bytes | mcdruid |
Comments
Comment #2
mcdruid commentedComment #3
mcdruid commentedInitial patch which includes #1713332-92: The SQLite database driver fails to drop simpletest tables (per the IS, it's pointless running SQLite tests without that).
I'll include an interdiff to show just the change to implement WAL.
Comment #4
mcdruid commentedLooks like the bot was happily running tests for a couple of minutes, and then hit:
Seeking assistance on the drupalci side of things there (I've asked in Drupal slack).
Comment #5
mcdruid commentedThis change isn't really within scope as it's not related to WAL, but I'm trying a few things out to get tests running all the way through.
I'll try to tidy things up if we figure it all out.
This is one of the few remaining differences I can see between D7 and D8 in the SQLite connection's construct and destruct methods.
Comment #6
joseph.olstadBeen 2 days, let's open a support issue in drupalci_testbot
https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/drupalci_testbot?categories=All
Comment #7
joseph.olstadHere it is.
Comment #8
mcdruid commentedThe re-run of the SQLite test in #5 worked as expected after #3173146: D7 CI failure with SQLite db using WAL was deployed to drupalci.
So tests should now run properly with SQLite (but require the changes from this issue too, otherwise the concurrency causes CI errors).
Here's a patch which has only the addition of WAL mode, in order to separate the changes out cleanly.
I think this test should run properly, but expect a lot of failures without the backport from #1713332: The SQLite database driver fails to drop simpletest tables.
No interdiff as this just removes changes which have their own patches in other issues - refer to #3172878: Fix SQLite tests in Drupal 7 for the overall summary.
Comment #9
mcdruid commentedLooks like we need both this and #1713332: The SQLite database driver fails to drop simpletest tables for tests to run properly, which is good to know.
Comment #10
fabianx commentedRTBM - Approved, thanks!
Comment #15
mcdruid commentedAdding credit from the original D8 issue.
Comment #17
mcdruid commentedThanks everyone!
(n.b. SQLite tests likely won't work properly until #1713332: The SQLite database driver fails to drop simpletest tables lands)