Last updated: 7 May 2026

publishing-api: Useful recipes for investigating issues with Sidekiq

This document provides various code snippets for looking into locks/digests in Sidekiq/SidekiqUniqueJobs. They might prove useful when investigating suspected issues with the publishing queue (e.g. when updates to a document are failing).

These recipes were initially developed when working on adding the old locks 'tab' to the Sidekiq web UI, which might also prove useful (as well as the helper code that powers it). To see the Sidekiq web UI in Publishing API, you'll first need to set up port forwarding.

Digests and their creation time

# using SidekiqUniqueJobs
SidekiqUniqueJobs::Digests.new.entries

# using Sidekiq
Sidekiq.redis { it.zscan("uniquejobs:digests", match: "*", count: 1000).to_a }.to_h

Digests ready to be reaped

This uses the SidekiqUniqueJobs v8 API. The API changes in v9.

Sidekiq.redis { SidekiqUniqueJobs::Orphans::RubyReaper.new(it).orphans }

Digest and lock information

digest = "uniquejobs:7fd6118dc979f0376b72cb5b9291dc68"

SidekiqUniqueJobs::Digests.new(digest)
SidekiqUniqueJobs::Lock.new(digest)

Locked job IDs

digest = "uniquejobs:7fd6118dc979f0376b72cb5b9291dc68"

# using SidekiqUniqueJobs
SidekiqUniqueJobs::Lock.new(digest).locked_jids
SidekiqUniqueJobs::Redis::Hash.new(digest)

# using Sidekiq
Sidekiq.redis { it.hkeys("#{digest}:LOCKED") }
Sidekiq.redis { it.call("HKEYS", "#{digest}:LOCKED") }

Creation time by job

This is the time listed in Redis for the job but it's likely equivalent to the digest creation time.

digest = "uniquejobs:7fd6118dc979f0376b72cb5b9291dc68"

# using SidekiqUniqueJobs
SidekiqUniqueJobs::Redis::Hash.new("#{digest}:LOCKED").entries(with_values: true)

# using Sidekiq
Sidekiq.redis { it.hgetall("#{digest}:LOCKED") }

Lock TTL

-2 seems to mean the lock is past TTL; positive values are the time until TTL.

digest = "uniquejobs:7fd6118dc979f0376b72cb5b9291dc68"

Sidekiq.redis { it.ttl("#{digest}:LOCKED") }

Retry set

Sidekiq::RetrySet.new.entries

Check if a digest is in the retry set

digest = "uniquejobs:7fd6118dc979f0376b72cb5b9291dc68"

Sidekiq.redis { it.zscan("uniquejobs:digests", match: "*#{digest}*", count: 1).to_a.any? }