diff --git a/doc/todo/test_suite_failures_since_7.20181121/comment_1_6017b1a9af0e0f0c600640a00ca4c684._comment b/doc/todo/test_suite_failures_since_7.20181121/comment_1_6017b1a9af0e0f0c600640a00ca4c684._comment
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+++ b/doc/todo/test_suite_failures_since_7.20181121/comment_1_6017b1a9af0e0f0c600640a00ca4c684._comment
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+[[!comment format=mdwn
+ username="joey"
+ subject="""comment 1"""
+ date="2018-12-18T20:18:31Z"
+ content="""
+The failure on mips seems to be due to NFS locking issues preventing deleting a
+directory. Running the test suite on NFS is likely to turn up this kind of
+problem. It should not be too hard to fix it, Utility.Gpg.testHarness probably
+just needs to catch more exceptions than the IO exceptions it already catches.
+
+The other two failures probably have the same underlying cause, it's a race
+condition or something like that involving unlocked files.
+
+I've been seeing this failure intermittently on the git-annex autobuilders
+for months, it's not a new problem. Probably longer than that, but there
+was another intermittent problem, since fixed, that occurred more often and
+so I probably didn't notice these.
+
+I think that disabling that part of the test suite would be a reasonable
+workaround, since if this is like the previous race it's unlikely to occur
+except when git-annex is used in the test suite or perhaps a script that runs a
+problimatic sequence of commands at a given speed.
+
+	diff --git a/Test.hs b/Test.hs
+	index be932cc51..f11260d71 100644
+	--- a/Test.hs
+	+++ b/Test.hs
+	@@ -145,8 +145,8 @@ tests crippledfilesystem opts = testGroup "Tests" $ properties :
+	 	map (\(d, te) -> withTestMode te initTests (unitTests d)) testmodes
+	   where
+	 	testmodes = catMaybes
+	-		[ Just ("v7 unlocked", (testMode opts (RepoVersion 7)) { unlockedFiles = True })
+	-		, unlesscrippled ("v5", testMode opts (RepoVersion 5))
+	+		-- Just ("v7 unlocked", (testMode opts (RepoVersion 7)) { unlockedFiles = True })
+	+		[ unlesscrippled ("v5", testMode opts (RepoVersion 5))
+	 		, unlesscrippled ("v7 locked", testMode opts (RepoVersion 7))
+	 		, Just ("v5 direct", (testMode opts (RepoVersion 5)) { forceDirect = True })
+	 		]
+
+Unfortunatly it's not at all clear how it's failing, there's no useful error
+message about what went wrong. If I had a good way to reproduce it I think I could
+get to the bottom of it in fairly short order.
+"""]]