> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.wellcomecollection.org/archivematica/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.wellcomecollection.org/archivematica/debugging-archivematica/restarting-services-if-a-task-is-stuck.md).

# Restarting services if a task is stuck

Sometimes a task will get stuck in the Archivematica dashboard. A common debugging technique is to restart all the services, usually using the ECS console.

The MCP Client/Server tasks can get stuck if there's an issue with the MySQL database, e.g. if the database server has been rebooted:

```
OperationalError: (2006, 'MySQL server has gone away')
```

If you don't want to restart all the services, here are some notes on restarting individual services and the potential impact:

* Restarting the MCP client tends to be okay. Not all tasks cope with being restarted – if the task doesn't expect to be run twice, you may fail the entire transfer/ingest; if so, you just have to retry the whole thing, sorry.
* Restarting the MCP server is more disruptive, and seems to cause all in-flight transfers/ingests to be dropped. I've seen it get stuck once or twice, but it's unusual.
* Restarting the Gearman server can interrupt foreground jobs held in its in-memory queue. The affected transfer or ingest may fail and need to be retried.