Invalidation That Normally Takes Seconds Running For Hours

I understand your concern about the CloudFront invalidation taking much longer than usual. While it's true that invalidations typically complete within seconds or minutes, there are situations where they can take longer.

First, it's important to note that once an invalidation request is submitted, it cannot be cancelled or killed, even by AWS support. The request is forwarded to all edge locations within seconds, and each location starts processing it immediately.

The extended processing time could be due to several factors:

1. High volume of objects: If your distribution has a large number of objects, it may take longer to process the invalidation.

2. Edge location updates: The changes need to propagate to all edge locations, which can take some time.

3. System-wide issues: There could be temporary issues affecting CloudFront's invalidation process.

While you can't directly intervene, here are some steps you can take:

1. Wait it out: In most cases, the invalidation will eventually complete.

2. Check for any AWS service health issues that might be affecting CloudFront.

3. If the problem persists for an extended period (e.g., more than 24 hours), consider contacting AWS support for further investigation.

4. In the meantime, if you need to serve updated content urgently, you could consider using versioning for your S3 objects or adding version identifiers to your file names as a workaround.

Remember, even if the invalidation status shows as "In Progress," the actual content may have already been updated at many edge locations. You can test this by accessing your content from different geographic locations or using a CDN testing tool.
  

Sources
Invalidate files - Amazon CloudFront
Cloudfront does not invalidate cache (s3 origin) | AWS re:Post