GitHub Pages deployment stuck in queued state and cannot be cancelled

[nur-aris07]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Deployment

Discussion Details

GitHub Pages deployment stuck in queued state and cannot be cancelled (HTTP 409)

Description

Hello GitHub Team and Community,

I'm experiencing an issue with GitHub Pages deployment. My website builds successfully, but the deployment gets stuck in the syncing_files state and eventually fails due to a timeout.

After attempting to re-run the failed workflow, it remains stuck in the queued state and cannot be cancelled, even using the GitHub REST API.

This issue prevents my latest website changes from being published.

Repository Information

• Repository: https://github.com/nur-aris07/portofolio
• GitHub Pages URL: https://nur-aris07.github.io/portofolio/
• Affected Workflow: https://github.com/nur-aris07/portofolio/actions/runs/42366456942
• Workflow Name: pages build and deployment
• Branch: main
• Commit SHA: a795d887052cef57a06dbaa8844e1a23363f8899
• Deployment Source: Deploy from a branch (main / root)
• Date: November 7, 2026

What Happened

1. Initial deployment failure

The workflow started normally:

• Build: Successful (27 seconds)
• Report build status: Successful (4 seconds)
• Deploy: Failed after approximately 10 minutes

The deployment logs repeatedly showed:

Getting Pages deployment status...
Current status: syncing_files

Eventually, the deployment failed with:

Timeout reached, aborting!

2. Workflow re-run stuck in queued state

I attempted to re-run the failed workflow using the GitHub Actions interface.

However, the re-run remained stuck in Queued and never started executing.

The GitHub Actions UI displayed the second attempt, but the REST API returned:

{
  "conclusion": null,
  "run_attempt": 1,
  "status": "queued"
}

3. Unable to cancel the workflow

Attempting cancellation through the GitHub Actions interface resulted in:

Cannot cancel a workflow run that is not in progress.

I also tried force-cancelling the workflow using the GitHub CLI:

gh api -i -X POST repos/nur-aris07/portofolio/actions/runs/42366456942/force-cancel

The API returned:

HTTP 409 Conflict
Cannot cancel a workflow re-run that has not yet queued.

4. Cancelling the Pages deployment did not resolve the issue

I attempted to cancel the GitHub Pages deployment directly through the REST API.

The API returned:

HTTP 204 No Content

However, checking the workflow afterward still returned queued.

5. GitHub Pages remains in an errored state

I checked the GitHub Pages configuration using:

gh api repos/nur-aris07/portofolio/pages --jq '{status, build_type}'

The response was:

{
  "build_type": "legacy",
  "status": "errored"
}

The GitHub Pages settings are configured to deploy from the main branch and /(root) directory.

The website is still accessible, but it continues to display an older version despite clearing the browser cache and performing a hard refresh.

Expected Behavior

• The workflow re-run should start normally.
• GitHub Pages should successfully deploy the latest commit.
• A queued or failed workflow should be cancellable.
• The website should display the latest committed changes.

Actual Behavior

• The deployment times out during syncing_files.
• The workflow re-run remains stuck in queued.
• Both normal cancellation and force cancellation fail.
• The GitHub Pages API reports errored.
• The published website remains outdated.

Request for Assistance

Could someone from GitHub or the community help investigate whether this workflow or Pages deployment is stuck in an inconsistent internal state?

Is there a way to clear the stuck workflow and restore normal GitHub Pages deployments without deleting or recreating the repository?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

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[MohamedAfify2025]

I am experiencing the same GitHub Pages deployment issue.

Repository: MohamedAfify2025/mohammed-afify

Workflow run: https://github.com/MohamedAfify2025/mohammed-afify/actions/runs/42408410473

Commit: 9e0696bdb6beb62901363e3a1ac68353c45b7549

The build job completes successfully, but the deploy job remains in syncing_files for approximately 10 minutes and then fails with:

Error: Timeout reached, aborting!

After rerunning failed jobs, the workflow remains stuck in queued with no jobs assigned.

Additional checks:

• Raw GitHub file URL returns HTTP 200.
• GitHub Pages URL returns HTTP 404.
• No other active workflows are running in the repository.

Could GitHub investigate whether this is a Pages deployment queue or synchronization issue?

Thank you.

[MohamedAfify2025]

I am experiencing the same GitHub Pages deployment issue.

Repository: MohamedAfify2025/mohammed-afify

Workflow run: https://github.com/MohamedAfify2025/mohammed-afify/actions/runs/42408410473

Commit: 9e0696bdb6beb62901363e3a1ac68353c45b7549

The build job completes successfully, but the deploy job remains in syncing_files for approximately 10 minutes and then fails with:

Error: Timeout reached, aborting!

After rerunning failed jobs, the workflow remains stuck in queued with no jobs assigned.

Additional checks:

• Raw GitHub file URL returns HTTP 200.
• GitHub Pages URL returns HTTP 404.
• No other active workflows are running in the repository.

Could GitHub investigate whether this is a Pages deployment queue or synchronization issue?

Thank you.

[philburk]

I am getting the same timeout with repeated "Getting Pages Deployment status..."

https://github.com/philburk/softsynth.github.io/actions/runs/42678293241/job/129375088744

I tried rerunning the same job and it failed.

stevenGGG23 suggested the following and it worked:

git commit --allow-empty -m "rebuild pages"
git push

[djungelorm]

I am also seeing the same problem, intermittently over the past 5 days:

https://github.com/krpc/krpc/actions/runs/41892706632/job/126814101448
https://github.com/krpc/krpc/actions/runs/42418109496/job/128540869976
https://github.com/krpc/krpc/actions/runs/42680580030/job/129374422657
https://github.com/krpc/krpc/actions/runs/42682716006/job/129381483739