yahoo-eng-team team mailing list archive

[Graham Leggett <minfrin@xxxxxxxx>]

Public bug reported:

We are currently trying to debug a sudden unexpected failure of a cloud-
init v17.1-46 script in Ubuntu v16.04, which fails as below, and we're
hampered by an excessively vague error message as follows:

2018-02-15 11:58:22,627 - util.py[WARNING]: Failed to shellify bootcmd
2018-02-15 11:58:22,634 - util.py[DEBUG]: Failed to shellify bootcmd
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/config/cc_bootcmd.py", line 54, in handle
    content = util.shellify(cfg["bootcmd"])
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/util.py", line 1847, in shellify
    % (type_utils.obj_name(args)))
RuntimeError: Unable to shellify type dict which is not a list or string

At warning level we have the error "Failed to shellify bootcmd", which
tells us that cloud-init could not continue, but refuses to tell us why
cloud-init could not continue, leaving us to guess.

At debug level we have the underlying exception from python. Here we get
the error "Unable to shellify type dict which is not a list or string",
which gives us the hint that we have a syntax error, but it doesn't tell
us what line the syntax error is on, or any context for the error.

The error is invisible by inspection, and various yaml linters tell us
our yaml is formatted correctly, although this is too imprecise to tell
us what has gone wrong.

To fix this bug, the error "Failed to shellify bootcmd" needs to be
extended with the reason for the error, and the reason for the error
needs to tell us on what line the error has occurred.

** Affects: cloud-init
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1749696

Title:
  Excessively vague error while parsing yaml: RuntimeError: Unable to
  shellify type dict which is not a list or string

Status in cloud-init:
  New

Bug description:
  We are currently trying to debug a sudden unexpected failure of a
  cloud-init v17.1-46 script in Ubuntu v16.04, which fails as below, and
  we're hampered by an excessively vague error message as follows:

  2018-02-15 11:58:22,627 - util.py[WARNING]: Failed to shellify bootcmd
  2018-02-15 11:58:22,634 - util.py[DEBUG]: Failed to shellify bootcmd
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/config/cc_bootcmd.py", line 54, in handle
      content = util.shellify(cfg["bootcmd"])
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/util.py", line 1847, in shellify
      % (type_utils.obj_name(args)))
  RuntimeError: Unable to shellify type dict which is not a list or string

  At warning level we have the error "Failed to shellify bootcmd", which
  tells us that cloud-init could not continue, but refuses to tell us
  why cloud-init could not continue, leaving us to guess.

  At debug level we have the underlying exception from python. Here we
  get the error "Unable to shellify type dict which is not a list or
  string", which gives us the hint that we have a syntax error, but it
  doesn't tell us what line the syntax error is on, or any context for
  the error.

  The error is invisible by inspection, and various yaml linters tell us
  our yaml is formatted correctly, although this is too imprecise to
  tell us what has gone wrong.

  To fix this bug, the error "Failed to shellify bootcmd" needs to be
  extended with the reason for the error, and the reason for the error
  needs to tell us on what line the error has occurred.

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