more transparency for container build in first charmcraft pack
Metadata
Current evaluation
Firewall-blocked LXD setup hung `charmcraft pack` indefinitely on instance network setup. No charmcraft change needed; maintainer tracked the missing timeout in craft-providers and closed the issue.
Resolution: closed superseded
Reason: facundobatista determined the hang was in craft-providers instance network setup (`getent hosts snapcraft.io`, no timeout) and tracked it as canonical/craft-providers#146, then closed charmcraft#823 saying the fix would come transparently from the library. That was delivered by merged craft-providers PRs #274 (b72f04c) and #305 (bca8dd4), which added setup/warmup timeouts.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
No scores available.
Issue body
When I ran the `charmcraft pack` command for the first time on a machine that had firewalls enabled, I wasn't sure how long the creation of the build container should take. I let it run for 90 minutes without it completing and then cancelled the command. The issue ended up being that I had enabled a firewall that was preventing charmcraft from being able to communicate with the lxd container which is why the command was stuck. It could have potentially helped to:
- Check the machine to any potential issues (such as firewall rules blocking traffic to the lxd container)
- Include more information about how long the command should take to execute and
- Include more information about what is going on to help the user determine whether a given action is taking a reasonable amount of time or whether there is likely to be an issue with the development environment.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed superseded | Firewall-blocked LXD setup hung `charmcraft pack` indefinitely on instance network setup. No charmcraft change needed; maintainer tracked the missing timeout in craft-providers and closed the issue. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed superseded | Firewall-blocked LXD setup could hang indefinitely; work moved to craft-providers#146, with setup/warmup timeouts implemented by merged PRs #274 and #305. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 | — | — | Closed as superseded. The charmcraft pack hang from firewall-blocked LXD traffic lacks a network timeout. A fix is tracked in craft-providers issue 146 and will be applied transparently to charmcraft. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Superseded by upstream fix. The charmcraft pack command hangs on DNS lookups when firewalls block LXD traffic. Maintainers opened an issue in the craft-providers library to add a timeout. The fix will be implemented upstream. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 | — | — | Closed as resolved upstream. The pack command hung on DNS resolution due to a missing timeout in craft-providers. A fix was opened in the craft-providers library to add timeouts and progress feedback, applied transparently to charmcraft. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related work
-
Superseded By:
canonical/craft-providers#146
(confidence 97%)
Maintainer filed this library issue to track adding a timeout for instance setup/warmup, which is where the fix was made.
-
Likely Fixed By:
canonical/craft-providers#274
(confidence 80%)
Merged commit b72f04c 'bases: refactor base handling code' added executor/setup timeouts resolving craft-providers#146.
-
Likely Fixed By:
canonical/craft-providers#305
(confidence 75%)
Merged commit bca8dd4 'base: clean up retry-until-timeout logic' refined the timeout behaviour introduced for setup/warmup.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #660 `charmcraft pack` fails with error writing to lxd unix socket | charmcraft | closed | A transient LXD socket timeout stopped packing; `charmcraft clean` restored operation, the error did not recur, and the reporter closed the report without a code fix. | |
| #1594 Running `charmcraft pack` fails and returns `Instance setup failed. Check LXD logs for more details` | charmcraft | closed | Closed as an environment conflict, not a Charmcraft defect: Docker had changed networking in a way that interfered with LXD, and the reporter confirmed that uninstalling Docker and restarting fixed it. | |
| #560 Charmcraft pack is giving error frequently | charmcraft | closed | The failure was traced to external LXD networking blocking access to archive.ubuntu.com during snapd installation; no Charmcraft fix was merged, and the reported firewall workaround did not help. | |
| #815 charmcraft pack fails - connection timed out could not connect | charmcraft | closed | User-reported charmcraft pack failure was a local host/network problem (archive.ubuntu.com/security.ubuntu.com unreachable during apt cache update in the LXD build container). Author rebooted their machine and packing worked again, then self-closed the issue. | |
| #1047 Charmcraft stuck on "launching environment" | charmcraft | closed | Craft-providers now verifies network connectivity and times out hung LXD setup, preventing indefinite waits; underlying LXD/Docker firewall conflicts may still require configuration. | |
| #511 `charmcraft pack` fails running `apt update` | charmcraft | closed | Closed with no Charmcraft code change: maintainers determined the `apt update` failure came from a broken host/LXD (fan bridge) networking setup, not a Charmcraft bug; guidance posted to Charmhub Discourse and the LXD forum. | |
| #849 charmcraft fails to pack sometimes when I am on tailscale VPN | charmcraft | closed | Tailscale blocked the LXD container’s internet access; packing worked after disabling Tailscale, so no Charmcraft code fix was made. | |
| #2369 charmcract pack stuck at `Pausing control of the terminal` | charmcraft | open | First `charmcraft pack` hung ~30 min at 'Pausing control of the terminal' during LXD build; reporter saw it once and never answered maintainer's follow-up. | |
| #1260 Charmcraft hangs or fails with LXD 5.18 | charmcraft | closed | LXD released a fix for the 5.18 image lookup failure; Charmcraft’s separate edge retry hang was fixed by craft-providers#415 (commit da95d03). | |
| #647 `charmcraft build` sometimes fails on `apt install` inside the lxd container | charmcraft | closed | Closed as a duplicate of #567; its dpkg-lock fix merged via PR #745 (commit b1adccd5), adding provider warmup to avoid competing APT updates. |