snapcraft erroneously errors when deleting non-existent multipass container
Metadata
Current evaluation
snapcraft clean fails with 'instance does not exist' when the multipass container is already gone; reporter suggests treating it as a no-op. Open since 2018, unlabeled, no maintainer activity for ~7.9 years.
Suggested action: close stale
Reason: The bug was reported against the snapcraft 2.x-era multipass integration (~2018) and has had zero comments, no labels, and no maintainer interaction for ~7.9 years; the affected version is long obsolete and the current codebase has been restructured around a services-based architecture, so the original error path is no longer applicable. The closely related multipass cleanup failure #1904774 was likewise closed as abandoned, supporting closure rather than indefinite open status.
Impact:
25
Quick Win:
18.75
Staleness:
92
Complexity:
25
Confidence:
55
Support Request:
10
Issue body
$ snapcraft clean
delete failed: The following errors occurred:
instance "snapcraft-krita" does not exist
An error occurred when trying to delete the instance with 'multipass': returned exit code 2.
Ensure that 'multipass' is setup correctly and try again.
The container didn't exist because I just had to remove multipass and reinstall it to fix another issue. Snapcraft error #2 when it tries to delete a multipass container that doesn't exist. Perhaps it should just continue anyway, given there was nothing to delete, that's not an error in my book.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qwen/qwen3.8-27b |
Impact:
25
Quick Win:
18.75
Staleness:
92
Complexity:
25
Confidence:
55
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | snapcraft clean fails with 'instance does not exist' when the multipass container is already gone; reporter suggests treating it as a no-op. Open since 2018, unlabeled, no maintainer activity for ~7.9 years. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Snapcraft fails during clean when deleting a non-existent Multipass container. Unlabeled, inactive for ~7.8 years, no maintainer response. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
10
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
5
|
needs triage | Snapcraft fails with an error when cleaning up a non-existent Multipass container instead of continuing silently. Unlabelled, no maintainer interaction, inactive for over 7 years. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
10
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
5
|
close stale | Reports snapcraft failing when cleaning a non-existent multipass container. Suggests it should succeed instead of erroring. Unlabeled, no maintainer response, inactive for ~7.8 years. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
100
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | snapcraft clean fails when attempting to delete a non-existent Multipass container. The report suggests the command should succeed silently instead of failing. No maintainer response or labels. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related work
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1904774
(confidence 70%)
Similar multipass instance cleanup failure during snapcraft runs; closed as abandoned without a fix, indicating the same class of stale multipass-integration bug.
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1807125
(confidence 50%)
Old multipass containers causing ambiguous errors after refresh; same multipass lifecycle area, also untriaged and inactive.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1806083 snapcraft fails to locate multipass (inside a multipass session) | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | snapcraft 3.0.1 fails to detect an installed multipass when run inside a multipass VM, prompting to install and dropping the user into a shell. No maintainer activity for ~7 years; affected version is long obsolete. | |
| #1807125 After snapcraft refresh, old multipass containers no longer work | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | snapcraft reuses outdated multipass containers after snap refresh, causing 'Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml' errors until snapcraft clean is run; untriaged, no maintainer activity for ~7.7 years | |
| #1810915 snapcraft can't tell when multipass is installed but disabled | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft fails to detect a disabled multipass snap, prompting to install it and then erroring out. Reported against multipass 2018.12.1 / ~2019 snapcraft; untriaged, 0 comments, no labels, inactive for ~7.6 years. | |
| #1904774 Snapcraft runs multipass setup but fails | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Abandoned. Snapcraft failed during multipass VM cleanup after reporting a missing instance. Closed without comments or fixes. | |
| #1813979 snapcraft cleanbuild wants to install multipass but it's already installed | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without resolution. Likely abandoned or superseded by newer snapcraft and multipass versions that resolved the detection and launch failures. | |
| #1856594 Snapcraft tutorial errors out on OSX with multipass error, "returned exit code 2" | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Dec 2019 report: snapcraft 3.9 on macOS fails via multipass (apt 404s, mount exit code 2) and crashes with AttributeError on os.sched_getaffinity. No maintainer activity; that code path no longer exists in current snapcraft, and macOS support was dropped. | |
| #5145 snapcraft fails to launch multipass instance when multipass isn't pre-installed | snapcraft | open | Snapcraft fails to launch a multipass VM with 'Remote snapcraft is unknown or unreachable' when multipass is installed on-demand. Maintainer triaged it as an image-server availability issue and linked craft-providers#211 for better error messaging; still open. | |
| #2044389 snapcraft clean failed but exit 0 | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | snapcraft clean returns exit code 0 despite reporting an error about missing instance. Reported for version 7.5.3, no maintainer response in 2.7 years. | |
| #1806470 Does not handle multipass instance being deleted | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without resolution. Snapcraft stalls when an externally deleted Multipass instance is not purged. No fix was implemented, indicating the issue was abandoned. | |
| #1984223 Snapcraft on riscv64 tries to install non-existent multipass snap | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft on riscv64 prompts for multipass setup instead of using lxd as default provider. Issue is 4+ years old with no maintainer interaction. |