After snapcraft refresh, old multipass containers no longer work
Metadata
Current evaluation
Snapcraft 3.0.1 could reuse incompatible Multipass VMs after a 3.0.0 refresh, causing a misleading missing-project error until snapcraft clean; the report is untriaged.
Suggested action: needs triage
Reason: The report provides a specific version transition, failure symptom, and working workaround, making it a credible build-breaking bug. It has no labels, maintainer response, or linked resolution; although the current tree uses craft-providers and declares a compatibility_tag, there is no evidence that change resolves this historical report, so reproduction and maintainer triage are still needed.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
Impact:
55
Quick Win:
14
Complexity:
60
Confidence:
70
Actionability:
63
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After snapcraft refresh, containers/VM with outdated libraries should be deleted.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha |
Impact:
55
Quick Win:
14
Complexity:
60
Confidence:
70
Actionability:
63
|
needs triage | Snapcraft 3.0.1 could reuse incompatible Multipass VMs after a 3.0.0 refresh, causing a misleading missing-project error until snapcraft clean; the report is untriaged. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha |
Impact:
48
Quick Win:
13
Complexity:
57
Confidence:
78
Actionability:
61
|
needs triage | Snapcraft 3.0.1 reused outdated Multipass VMs after a 3.0.0 refresh, producing a misleading missing-project error until snapcraft clean; untriaged with no follow-up. | |
| qwen/qwen3.8-27b |
Impact:
35
Quick Win:
21
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needs triage | snapcraft reuses outdated multipass containers after snap refresh, causing 'Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml' errors until snapcraft clean is run; untriaged, no maintainer activity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close stale | snapcraft reuses outdated multipass containers after refresh, causing ambiguous errors.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. |
Update history
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| created |
Related work
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1794361
(confidence 68%)
Adjacent Multipass environment migration issue; it was fixed by PR #2293, but no evidence links that fix to stale VM reuse.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1794955 snapcraft erroneously errors when deleting non-existent multipass container | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | snapcraft clean treats an absent Multipass instance as a deletion error after Multipass was reinstalled; the report is concrete but untriaged and may need validation against the current clean path. | |
| #1869542 snapcraft unable to find snap/snapcraft.yaml file | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft 3.11 on Multipass intermittently lost the project dir in the VM ('Could not find snap/snapcraft.yaml'), only fixable by `snapcraft clean`. Reproducer never supplied; reporter redirected it to the Multipass tracker and never followed up. | |
| #1806083 snapcraft fails to locate multipass (inside a multipass session) | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft 3.0.1 falsely reported Multipass missing inside a Multipass guest; Darwin-only detection in e9ae8d29f addressed the old path, but the Launchpad record remains open. | |
| #1813979 snapcraft cleanbuild wants to install multipass but it's already installed | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Deb-packaged Snapcraft 2.43.1 failed while Multipass worked in 3.0.1. Legacy cleanbuild was later removed because builds are clean by default. | |
| #1810915 snapcraft can't tell when multipass is installed but disabled | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft misclassified an installed but disabled Multipass snap as missing, prompting installation before failing. The 2018 report remains untriaged, and its behavior needs validation against the current provider architecture. | |
| #1806057 Multipass & libvirt services not restarted after snapcraft 3.0 installation | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft 3.0 left Multipass/libvirt daemons stopped, breaking multipass list after installation. Maintainers rejected unsafe automatic restarts and suggested pre-flight checks; no resolving change is identified. | |
| #1947914 concurrent snapcraft builds with multipass provider | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft 5/Core 18 Multipass builds reportedly shared 10.30.202.6 and terminated silently; the old report has no maintainer assessment and needs triage against current versions. | |
| #4106 Error 2 on snapcraft on linux with multipass: | snapcraft | closed | Multipass's Snapcraft image remote recovered; CI and the reporter succeeded again, and the reporter closed the report as solved without a Snapcraft code change. | |
| #5145 snapcraft fails to launch multipass instance when multipass isn't pre-installed | snapcraft | open | Snapcraft emits cryptic 'Remote "snapcraft" is unknown or unreachable / exit code 2' when Multipass can't launch the build instance; maintainer traced it to image-server unavailability or non-amd64 hosts, fix tracked in craft-providers#211 | |
| #1813942 `snapcraft clean <part>` doesn't ensure the project is mounted | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft 3.1 clean <part> fails in Multipass after manually unmounting the project; the report remains unlabelled and untriaged with no activity since submission. |