Troubleshooting Geo failover

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Fixing errors during a failover or when promoting a secondary to a primary site

The following are possible error messages that might be encountered during failover or when promoting a secondary to a primary site with strategies to resolve them.

Message: `ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid: Validation failed: Name has already been taken`

When promoting a secondary site, you might encounter the following error message:

Running gitlab-rake geo:set_secondary_as_primary...

rake aborted!
ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid: Validation failed: Name has already been taken
/opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/ee/lib/tasks/geo.rake:236:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
/opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/ee/lib/tasks/geo.rake:221:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
/opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/bundle:23:in `load'
/opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/bundle:23:in `<main>'
Tasks: TOP => geo:set_secondary_as_primary
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

You successfully promoted this node!

If you encounter this message when running gitlab-rake geo:set_secondary_as_primary or gitlab-ctl promote-to-primary-node, enter a Rails console and run:

Rails.application.load_tasks; nil
Gitlab::Geo.expire_cache!
Rake::Task['geo:set_secondary_as_primary'].invoke

Message: NoMethodError: undefined method `secondary?' for nil:NilClass

When promoting a secondary site, you might encounter the following error message:

sudo gitlab-rake geo:set_secondary_as_primary

rake aborted!
NoMethodError: undefined method `secondary?' for nil:NilClass
/opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/ee/lib/tasks/geo.rake:232:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
/opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/ee/lib/tasks/geo.rake:221:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
/opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/bundle:23:in `load'
/opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/bundle:23:in `<main>'
Tasks: TOP => geo:set_secondary_as_primary
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

This command is intended to be executed on a secondary site only, and this error message is displayed if you attempt to run this command on a primary site.

Expired artifacts

If you notice for some reason there are more artifacts on the Geo secondary site than on the Geo primary site, you can use the Rake task to cleanup orphan artifact files.

On a Geo secondary site, this command also cleans up all Geo registry record related to the orphan files on disk.

Fixing sign in errors

Message: The redirect URI included is not valid

If you are able to sign in to the web interface for the primary site, but you receive this error message when attempting to sign in to a secondary web interface, you should verify the Geo site's URL matches its external URL.

On the primary site:

On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin area.
Select Geo > Sites.
Find the affected secondary site and select Edit.
Ensure the URL field matches the value found in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb in external_url "https://gitlab.example.com" on the Rails nodes of the secondary site.

Authenticating with SAML on the secondary site always lands on the primary site

This problem is usually encountered when upgrading to GitLab 15.1. To fix this problem, see configuring instance-wide SAML in Geo with Single Sign-On.

Recovering from a partial failover

The partial failover to a secondary Geo site may be the result of a temporary/transient issue. Therefore, first attempt to run the promote command again.

SSH into every Sidekiq, PostgreSQL, Gitaly, and Rails node in the secondary site and run one of the following commands:
- To promote the secondary site to primary:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl geo promote
```
- To promote the secondary site to primary without any further confirmation:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl geo promote --force
```
Verify you can connect to the newly-promoted primary site using the URL used previously for the secondary site.
If successful, the secondary site is now promoted to the primary site.

If the above steps are not successful, proceed through the next steps:

SSH to every Sidekiq, PostgreSQL, Gitaly and Rails node in the secondary site and perform the following operations:
- Create a /etc/gitlab/gitlab-cluster.json file with the following content:
```
{
  "primary": true,
  "secondary": false
}
```
- Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
```
Verify you can connect to the newly-promoted primary site using the URL used previously for the secondary site.
If successful, the secondary site is now promoted to the primary site.