What is the problem?

When attempting to create a new global block, I got the response:

Via the API:

{
    "error": {
        "globalblock": [
            {
                "code": "globalblocking-block-failure",
                "message": "An error occurred while attempting to globally block ~2024-7017. Please try again."
            }
        ]
    }
}

Via Special:GlobalBlock:

An error occurred while attempting to globally block ~2024-7017. Please try again.

It was against a temp account which had an expired global block. My test environment had a lot of expired global blocks so the prune that was triggered by the block request did not prune their block (the limit is 100). Therefore, I guess the INSERT IGNORE ... query did not insert a new row. It happened regardless of whether I set the modify parameter.

I guess this won't necessarily happen often, but when it does the error message is a bit cryptic and it is unclear how to fix it.

Steps to reproduce problem

1. $wgUpdateRowsPerQuery = 1;
2. Create two global blocks with a short expiry date (e.g. 10 seconds)
3. Wait 10 seconds for the blocks to expire
4. Create another global block against the last user you blocked in step 2

Expected behaviour: A new global block is created
Observed behaviour: Above error

Environment

Wiki(s): local docker GlobalBlocking – (5808f91) 17:49, 25 October 2024.