After snapcraft refresh, old multipass containers no longer work
Metadata
Current evaluation
snapcraft reuses outdated multipass containers after snap refresh, causing 'Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml' errors until snapcraft clean is run; untriaged, no maintainer activity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
Suggested action: needs triage
Reason: Issue has zero comments, no labels, no assignee, and no maintainer interaction in ~7.7 years (2825 days). The reported error ('Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml') matches at least two other open Launchpad bugs (#1869542, #1794955), suggesting a recurring multipass container lifecycle problem, but no fix or triage has occurred. A maintainer needs to confirm whether stale container reuse is still reproducible on current snapcraft before deciding to close or address.
Impact:
35
Quick Win:
21.0
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
70
Support Request:
10
Issue body
After snapcraft refresh (e,g.: 3.0.0 -> 3.0.1), running snapcraft results in ambiguous errors like:
Launching a VM.
Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml. Are you sure you are in the right directory?
To start a new project, use `snapcraft init`
snapcraft clean resolves the issue.
Snapcraft is re-using old multipass containers, which leads to some internal functionality conflicts.
Expected behavior:
After snapcraft refresh, containers/VM with outdated libraries should be deleted.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qwen/qwen3.8-27b |
Impact:
35
Quick Win:
21.0
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
70
Support Request:
10
|
needs triage | snapcraft reuses outdated multipass containers after snap refresh, causing 'Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml' errors until snapcraft clean is run; untriaged, no maintainer activity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 | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
65
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | snapcraft reuses outdated multipass containers after refresh, causing ambiguous errors. Requires manual clean to resolve. Untriaged, inactive for ~7.6 years. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
30
|
close stale | Snapcraft reuses outdated Multipass containers after version upgrades, causing ambiguous errors. Requires manual cleanup via snapcraft clean. Issue is over 7 years old with no maintainer interaction. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
60
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
15
|
close stale | Ambiguous errors occur after snapcraft updates due to reused multipass containers; suggests automatic cleanup. Unaddressed for over 7 years with no maintainer interaction. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
100
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
95
Support Request:
20
|
close stale | Reports that refreshing snapcraft causes old Multipass containers to fail. Suggests automatic cleanup of outdated containers. Untriaged and inactive for over 7 years. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related work
-
Duplicate Of:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1807125
(confidence 85%)
Same title, same error, same root cause (stale multipass container after refresh), same reporter
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1869542
(confidence 60%)
Same 'unable to find snapcraft.yaml' symptom requiring clean to recreate VM
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1794955
(confidence 50%)
Related multipass container lifecycle bug: clean errors on non-existent container
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1794955 snapcraft erroneously errors when deleting non-existent multipass container | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | 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. | |
| #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. | |
| #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. | |
| #1947914 concurrent snapcraft builds with multipass provider | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Concurrent snapcraft builds with the multipass provider assign all instances the same IPv4, aborting builds with no debug info. No labels, comments, or maintainer activity in ~4.8 years; targets snapcraft 5.0 on EOL Ubuntu 18.04/20.04. | |
| #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. | |
| #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. | |
| #1806057 Multipass & libvirt services not restarted after snapcraft 3.0 installation | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft 3.0 install reportedly stops multipass/libvirt services, breaking 'multipass list' until manual restart. 7.75 years old, zero comments, no labels, author account deactivated, no maintainer interaction. | |
| #1813942 `snapcraft clean <part>` doesn't ensure the project is mounted | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | snapcraft clean <part> fails with 'Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml' when the multipass project is manually unmounted. Reported in 2017 against v3.1; no maintainer response. Codebase since rewritten to craft_application, making the original code path obsolete. |