Session Log: CodePipeline Failure Analysis — Config Drift and CLI Memory Limit Fixes
Date: 2026-09-02
Participants: Yuji Shinozaki, Claude Code
Outcome: Diagnosed two causes of recent uva-mandala-drupal-codepipeline failures — a
post-cim config-drift guard tripped by PR #177's hand-edited
core.entity_view_display.node.shanti_image.grid_details.yml (Drupal reorders view-display
components alphabetically; the hand-edit kept insertion order), and a separate, already
self-resolved 128M CLI memory_limit OOM. Fixed both in
PR #179 (merged), re-exporting the
config from a real drush config:export round-trip and adding a PHP_SAPI === 'cli'-scoped
ini_set('memory_limit', '1024M') to settings.php. Watched the resulting deploy go green
end-to-end, including the previously-failing drift-check task. Open question for a future
group session — how to catch config-YAML drift at PR review time instead of only at deploy
time — recorded in
config-export-drift-hand-edited-yaml.md.
This is the raw conversation transcript. Tool calls and code output are omitted; only the text exchanges are recorded.
User — 2026-09-02 18:09
pull the newest from git
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:09
Pull succeeded — fast-forwarded 538976f→b4bf4e5 with a big batch of work (Sprint 2 theme, image gallery grid, IIIF deep zoom viewer, KMaps popover, content model audits). Now orienting per the session-startup checklist.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:10
This confirms the two 2026-09-02 logs are companion documents from the same session (raw transcript + agenda), not a pending handoff — status is "Complete." I have full orientation now.
Pull complete. Fast-forwarded 538976f → b4bf4e5 (main is clean, no local changes lost). Since your last local sync, the team landed a big batch:
- Sprint 2 theme/UI work (PR #171 and others):
shanti_sarvakabase theme installed on dev-0, OpenSeadragon deep-zoom IIIF viewer, masonry image gallery grid (shanti_grid_viewmodule), KMaps hover popover - ADR 017 (legacy identity composite key) ratified as Accepted
- Group-role migration decisions: 171 collection/subcollection groups re-owned to real D7 creators (uid:1 bug fixed), staging→production Solr write leaks disabled on dev-1,
deployspec.ymlshallow-clone fix - Content model audits completed for AV, Sources, and Texts
Still open per the 2026-09-02 agenda session: the combined contributor + group-editor Group-role migration (hard cutover gate, ADR 015/Q2 already decided the model) still needs a scheduling call/owner — that's the one loose end nobody closed.
No stale-context surprises — happy to dig into any of the above or pick up where a specific thread left off.
User — 2026-09-02 18:10
Right now I would like you to examine the aws codepipeline. There are recent errors that need analysis
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:11
Found two relevant pipelines: uva-mandala-drupal-codepipeline and uva-mandala-solr-proxy-codepipeline. Let me check recent execution history on both.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:11
Deploy stage failed on today's run (triggered by the KMaps popover merge, PR #177). Let me get the failure details.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:12
CodeBuild project uva-mandala-drupal-project-deploy failed running ansible-playbook deploy_backend.yml (exit status 2). Let me pull the actual CodeBuild logs to see what Ansible task failed.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:12
Got the CloudWatch log group/stream. Let me pull the actual log tail to find the Ansible failure.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:12
Found it — the deploy failed on a post-import drift check, not the import itself. Let me check the earlier failure from Sept 1 too, since it may be the same recurring issue.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:13
Now checking the Sept-1 fatal error (memory exhaustion in drush cim) against the memory of a known recurring OOM issue, and let's inspect the deploy playbook's drift-check task plus the actual config file that's drifting.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:15
Good, terraform-infrastructure is already checked out locally. Per the memory note (no branches, commit straight to master, churns constantly), let me pull it to current.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:16
This looks like a genuine config-dependency mismatch, likely introduced by the KMaps popover PR. Let me verify by checking what modules are actually installed and what the formatter plugins declare.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:17
Let me confirm the exact nature of the drift by reaching the actual host and running drush config:diff on that specific config item, rather than speculating.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:18
That failing check catches real config drift specifically on core.entity_view_display.node.shanti_image.grid_details — introduced by today's KMaps popover commit — even though cim itself succeeded. Since cim already applied changes before the check failed, let me see what deploy steps got skipped afterward that might leave the site in a partial state.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:19
CodePipeline analysis: uva-mandala-drupal-codepipeline
Current state: stuck failing. The pipeline's most recent execution (triggered by today's merge of PR #177, "KMaps popover on gallery tags") failed in the Deploy stage, and that failure will recur on every future deploy until it's fixed — this isn't a flake.
Today's failure (2026-09-02 13:59, still the current pipeline state)
- Source and Build succeeded; Deploy failed in CodeBuild (
uva-mandala-drupal-project-deploy) runningansible-playbook deploy_backend.yml. drush cim -y(import config) succeeded and applied changes.- The very next step — a deliberate post-import drift guard (
deploy_backend.yml:286, added specifically to close outdeploy-never-imports-config-sync.md) — randrush config:statusand found one item stillDifferentafter import:{"core.entity_view_display.node.shanti_image.grid_details": {"state": "Different"}} - I traced this to commit
4ac2984(PR #177 itself), which hand-editedcore.entity_view_display.node.shanti_image.grid_details.ymlto switchfield_places/field_subjectsto the newkmap_popover_formatterand un-hidefield_kmap_terms. That edit was almost certainly made by hand rather than round-tripped through a live Drupal instance (drush config:exportafter applying it). Drupal recalculates each config entity'sdependenciesblock on save — if the committed YAML's dependency list doesn't exactly match what Drupal computes for these formatters (theiiif_imageandkmap_popover_formatterplugins both add dependencies based on settings), the site's active config diverges from the repo right after import, which is exactly what the guard is designed to catch.
Practical impact: cim already applied the change, so dev-0/staging is very likely already serving the new popover feature correctly. The two steps skipped after the failure (Apache reload, Docker image prune) are low-risk. The real problem is the pipeline will keep failing at this same check on every subsequent merge until the config file is corrected.
Fix path: re-derive that YAML from a live site (DDEV or dev-0) via drush config:export after applying the intended formatter changes, so the committed dependencies block matches what Drupal actually computes, then commit and let the pipeline re-run clean.
A second, unrelated failure (2026-09-01 10:05, already resolved by retry)
- Different root cause, same symptom shape (
ansible-playbook ... exit status 2):drush cim -yitself crashed withFatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhaustedduring Symfony DI container compilation while importing the theme/blocks batch (PR #169). - This is the already-known 128M CLI
memory_limitlandmine (same one hit manually on 2026-08-27/08-28, tracked inmigrate-large-migration-oom-and-resume-behavior.md) — now confirmed to also hit the automated pipeline'scimstep, not justmigrate:import. It self-resolved on retry (next execution succeeded 2026-09-01 12:16) since retries don't add memory pressure the same way, but it's a standing risk on any deploy with a large config batch. Worth raising the CLImemory_limitpersistently in the container image rather than continuing to rely on lucky reruns.
uva-mandala-solr-proxy-codepipeline
No recent activity — last execution was 2026-08-19, succeeded. Nothing new there.
Want me to fix the grid_details display config now (reproduce in DDEV, re-export, commit)?
User — 2026-09-02 18:23
Yes fix the grid_details and we should (in a future session) discuss how this config drift should be handled in the future. Also please implement the 128M CLI limit
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:24
Two tasks. First let's reproduce and fix the grid_details config drift using DDEV as the round-trip source of truth.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:24
Docker isn't running. Let me start it.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:25
DDEV is up. Now let's check the site's DB state and reproduce the drift.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:28
Now let's retry the update/import sequence.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:29
cim succeeded cleanly here. Now let's check for drift, same as the pipeline's guard does.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:29
Reproduced exactly. Now let's see the actual diff to understand precisely what Drupal recalculated differently.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:30
That confirms the exact root cause: pure key-ordering in the content: mapping — Drupal reorders components alphabetically by field machine name when it saves the entity (field_kmap_terms < field_places < field_subjects), but the hand-edited YAML kept the field in insertion order. The data is semantically identical; only order differs, but Drupal's config comparator is order-sensitive. Let's regenerate this file the correct way — via config:export — rather than hand-editing again.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:30
The other two files just lost hand-written explanatory comments (Drupal's config storage doesn't preserve YAML comments — config:export strips them since they're not part of the actual config data). Those comments are valuable documentation from the group-ownership fix — reverting those two files and keeping only the real fix.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:30
Now let's verify this is truly clean by re-running the exact drift check the pipeline uses.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:30
Clean. Now let's implement the CLI memory limit fix, then quickly sanity-check the site still renders correctly in DDEV before committing.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:30
Good — site's healthy. Now the second fix: persist the CLI-SAPI memory_limit in the Drupal image.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:31
Let me verify this actually works against the real base image before trusting it blindly — building the full image would take too long, so I'll test the mechanism directly against the base image.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:31
Good call to test — it didn't work. Let me check what actually got picked up.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:33
The SAPI-subdirectory conf.d trick doesn't exist in this build (verified empirically — it's a no-op). Since Apache here uses embedded mod_php (not a separate php CLI process), the cleanest way to scope this to CLI-only is to wrap the standalone php binary itself — Apache never invokes it. Let me verify the binary path and test this approach.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:33
This works exactly as intended: php (CLI, used by drush/composer) gets 1024M, while the actual php_module Apache loads (a separate .so, unaffected by the CLI binary at all) stays at the base image's 128M for web requests. Let me update the Dockerfile with the correct approach.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:33
Now let's do a full build of this Dockerfile to confirm it works end-to-end (composer install, drush, Apache all still function).
User — 2026-09-02 18:34
[Request interrupted by user for tool use]
User — 2026-09-02 18:34
That feels like a real hack. Please don't implement it that way.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:35
You're right, that was hacky. Let me look for a cleaner, more standard way — starting with how drush itself invokes PHP, since Drush may already have a supported hook for this.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:35
A much cleaner approach exists: memory_limit is a runtime-changeable PHP directive, and Drupal's own settings.php is the idiomatic place to scope a change to the CLI SAPI — no Docker/binary tricks needed, and it travels with the codebase everywhere (DDEV, dev-0, staging, future prod) automatically.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:35
This is exactly the kind of file to put this in — already env-aware, well-conventioned, and Drupal's own comment block on PHP settings even references ini_set(). Let me add it there.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:35
Now let's revert the Dockerfile hack and verify this settings.php approach actually works in DDEV.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:35
Reverting the hack from the Dockerfile.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:36
Dockerfile is back to clean original. Now let's verify the settings.php approach actually works in DDEV.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:36
Clean — exactly the two intended fixes, no test artifacts. Let's rebuild cache once more and do a final end-to-end sanity check before committing.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:37
Everything checks out. Now let's commit both fixes.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:37
Two commits are in locally, but I shouldn't push straight to main — this repo's real workflow is feature branch → PR → merge (which also triggers an auto-deploy via the pipeline webhook, a shared/hard-to-reverse action). Let me move these onto a branch and open a PR instead.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:37
main is back to matching origin/main, and both fixes now live on fix/grid-details-drift-and-cli-memory-limit. Let me push and open the PR.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:38
The user also flagged wanting to discuss config-drift handling in a future session — that's exactly the "awaiting a group decision" bucket in the deferred docs. Let me add that properly.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:38
Now let's write the deferred note.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:38
Now updating the .pages nav and the docs/deferred/README.md index (both required per the session-end ritual).
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:38
This deferred-note documentation belongs with the same PR since it documents the exact incident PR #179 fixes. Let me add it there.
Claude — 2026-09-02 18:39
Both fixes are up. Summary:
PR #179 (https://github.com/uvalib/mandala-navina/pull/179) — not merged, awaiting your call since merging to main auto-triggers the deploy pipeline:
grid_detailsconfig drift — reproduced the exact failure in DDEV, confirmed viadrush config:getdiff that it was pure key-ordering (Drupal saves view-display components alphabetically by field name; PR #177's hand-edit kept insertion order). Fixed by round-tripping through a realdrush config:export, not another hand-edit. Verifiedconfig:statusis clean aftercim, and the site renders correctly in DDEV.- CLI memory_limit — after you flagged the wrapper-binary approach as a hack, I found a much cleaner fix:
memory_limitis a runtime-settable PHP directive, so aPHP_SAPI === 'cli'guard insettings.phpraises it to 1024M for drush/composer only, leaving Apache's web-request memory untouched (verified both:drush php:evalreports 1024M, live web request still 200). No Docker/infra changes needed — it's one commit in the app repo, and it applies automatically everywhere the codebase runs. - Docs: added
docs/deferred/config-export-drift-hand-edited-yaml.mdunder the "awaiting a team decision" bucket, laying out the open question you raised — how to catch config-YAML drift at PR review time instead of only at deploy time (options: CI round-trip check, lighter local hook, or just a documented norm). Ready for the group agenda whenever you pick it up.
One thing worth noting: I initially tried scoping the memory fix by renaming /usr/local/bin/php and wrapping it in the Dockerfile — you correctly called that out as a hack, and the settings.php approach is a real improvement (simpler, no image rebuild dependency, self-documenting).
DDEV is still running locally if you want to poke at anything further; let me know if you'd like me to stop it, or merge the PR now.
User — 2026-09-02 19:17
go ahead and merge it and the watch the deploy
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:17
Merged (b4bf4e5..8a30d5e) and fast-forwarded local main automatically. Now let's watch the pipeline execution it triggers.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:18
New execution 91d53e8e started at 15:17:48, already in progress. Let me watch it through to completion.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:18
Monitoring the deploy in the background — I'll report back once it finishes (or update you on stage transitions as they come in). No need to wait idle in the meantime.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:18
That's a stale "Deploy" status carried over from the previous failed run — the new execution's Source succeeded and Build is still in progress, Deploy hasn't started yet for this run. Continuing to watch.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:19
Still building — Deploy status shown is stale from the prior failed run and will update once the current execution reaches that stage. Waiting for the next signal.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:19
Good — that cancels a redundant polling wakeup; the Monitor task itself is already watching the pipeline and will notify on the next state change or completion, so no need to double-poll. Waiting for that.
User — 2026-09-02 19:19
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:19
Still building — same stale Deploy status from the prior run, nothing new to act on yet. Continuing to wait for the Build stage to finish.
User — 2026-09-02 19:19
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:19
Build's still running (this is the same repeated status as before — nothing changed). I'll keep waiting silently until there's an actual state transition to report.
User — 2026-09-02 19:19
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:20
Let me check directly rather than keep waiting on repeated identical notifications — this Build stage should have finished by now based on prior run timing.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:20
Only ~2.5 minutes in — normal for the Docker build stage (composer install + image push). Not stuck; continuing to wait quietly for the next real transition.
User — 2026-09-02 19:20
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:20
Still building — no change yet.
User — 2026-09-02 19:20
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:21
(still building, no change)
User — 2026-09-02 19:21
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:21
Build succeeded — Deploy stage (the one that failed twice before, running the Ansible playbook) is now in progress. This is the critical stage to watch.
User — 2026-09-02 19:21
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:21
Deploy still in progress — no change from last check.
User — 2026-09-02 19:21
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:22
(still deploying — this is the stage that previously failed at the drift check; waiting for it to clear that point)
User — 2026-09-02 19:22
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:22
Only ~1.5 minutes into Deploy — the previous run took about 5 minutes total before hitting the drift check. Continuing to wait.
User — 2026-09-02 19:22
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:22
(still deploying)
User — 2026-09-02 19:23
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:23
(still deploying)
User — 2026-09-02 19:23
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:23
Only ~2 minutes elapsed — the previous run reached its failure at the drift check around the 5-minute mark, and there's more work happening now (updb, cim) before we'd expect to see the outcome. Still normal.
User — 2026-09-02 19:23
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:23
(still deploying)
User — 2026-09-02 19:24
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:24
(still deploying)
User — 2026-09-02 19:24
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:24
About 3.5 minutes into Deploy now — right around where the previous run's drift check would have fired. Still waiting for the next transition.
User — 2026-09-02 19:24
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:24
(still deploying)
User — 2026-09-02 19:25
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:25
(still deploying)
User — 2026-09-02 19:25
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:25
(still deploying)
User — 2026-09-02 19:25
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:26
Now in the BUILD phase (running the Ansible playbook itself) — this is where it failed twice before, right around the cim/drift-check step. Let me tail the live logs to watch it pass that point in real time.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:26
Right at the "run pending database updates" task now — the next two steps (updb, then cim, then the drift check) are the ones that matter. Let me tail live until it clears the drift check.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:26
I already have the Monitor task running for the overall pipeline status; let me just check the log directly now.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:26
The drift check passed (TASK [verify configuration import left no drift] → ok) — that's the exact task that failed twice before. It's now sailing through Apache reload and the SimpleSAML config load, right near the end of the playbook.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:26
On the final task now (cleanup docker — the docker image prune). Almost done.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:26
BUILD phase succeeded and CodeBuild finished all its phases. Pipeline execution status will flip once CodePipeline itself catches up.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:27
CodePipeline just needs a moment to register the CodeBuild completion. Waiting for it to catch up.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:27
Deferring to the Monitor task now that CodeBuild has finished all phases successfully — waiting for it to report the final pipeline status.
User — 2026-09-02 19:27
User — 2026-09-02 19:27
User — 2026-09-02 19:27
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:27
Deploy succeeded. The pipeline is now green end-to-end.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:27
Pipeline is fully green. Source → Build → Deploy all succeeded, and critically, the verify configuration import left no drift task — the exact one that failed on the last two runs — passed clean this time. dev-0/staging is now running the merged code with both fixes live.
Since docker/DDEV is still running locally from the earlier reproduction work, let me know if you want me to leave it up or shut it down.
User — 2026-09-02 19:29
you might as well bring the ddev instances down.
Claude — 2026-09-02 19:29
DDEV is stopped and its containers removed. Docker Desktop itself is still running in the background in case you need it again — let me know if you'd like that shut down too.
User — 2026-09-02 19:29
What needs to be checked in. Let's wrap up the session with documentation etc.