Seven test files asserted sub-2s wall-clock bounds (elapsed < 0.5/1.0s,
stop(timeout=1.0), event waits of 0.5-2s). Under CI load these fired on
healthy code: main run 33455779041 alone flaked 6 of them in one pass
(observed 1.01s vs 0.5, 1.20s vs 1.0, 3.61s vs 3.0, 1.55s vs 1.0,
stop(1.0) returning False, lease TTL 0.1s expiring before the authority
change was observed).
Per the AGENTS.md flake policy (waits >= 2s), bounds are raised to 5s+
while keeping their teeth: every hang path they guard blocks for 10s+
(release.wait holds), so the loosened bounds still distinguish bounded
from unbounded behavior. The authority-loss test gets a 30s lease TTL so
lease expiry can no longer preempt the authority-change assertion.
connect() wrapped its entire body in an unbounded blocking flock(LOCK_EX) on
every call (_cross_process_init_lock). A single process stalled inside the
critical section — or a stale lock held by a wedged worker — blocked every
other connect(), including the long-lived gateway dispatcher's next-tick
connect, forever. No timeout, no traceback, no recovery: the board silently
stopped being worked until a manual restart (issue #36644).
Two fixes:
1. Fast-path skip: once THIS process has initialized a path, the expensive
first-open work (header validation, integrity probe, schema + additive
migrations) is already cached in _INITIALIZED_PATHS. The steady-state
connect has nothing for the cross-process lock to protect, so it now opens
the connection (WAL + pragmas) under only the cheap in-process _INIT_LOCK
and never touches the file lock. This removes the lock from the dispatcher's
hot path entirely — a stalled external 'hermes kanban list' can no longer
block ticks.
2. Bounded acquire: even on first-init, _cross_process_init_lock now retries a
non-blocking acquire up to a 10s deadline, then logs a WARNING and proceeds
WITHOUT the cross-process lock. Safe because the in-process _INIT_LOCK still
serializes same-process threads and the init work is idempotent
(CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS + additive migrations) — worst case is redundant
work, not corruption. A bounded 'proceed anyway' beats an unbounded hang.
Windows path switched LK_LOCK -> LK_NBLCK (non-blocking) to match.
Closes#36644.
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