[Buildbot-devel] problem "want to start build, but we don't have a remote"

[Brian Warner]

Timothee Besset <ttimo at idsoftware.com> writes:

> I'm getting a weird situation where one of the builders accumulates the
> build pending but never starts them. We always use the http interface to
> force the build to start, and now it just says 'n pending', 'n+1 pending'.

It kind of sounds like a reconfig took place and the new Builder failed to
connect up with the existing slave. Maybe a race condition in the reconfig
code?

> I restarted the builder and when it came back up it proceeded with the
> build just fine. Any suggestion on what went wrong / what I should
> investigate next time there's a problem?

You might want to set up the manhole/ssh port. Then if this happens again,
you can get into a python interpreter shell inside the buildmaster and
examine the Builder object.. you'd be looking to see if it really has a
buildslave available or if it's just confused.

> PS: Thought I'd give you a little update on buildbot usage at id for
> your web page. What you have there on us is quite outdated. We now have
> 3 seperate installations, with 14 builders total. Our build process
> slaves include Windows machines, Linux, MacOS X, building for XBox 360
> and PS3 consoles.

Neat! I'll update the page. I assume you're cross-compiling for those
consoles, right? I'd be doubly impressed if you had buildslaves actually
running *on* an XBox and PS3 :).

cheers,
 -Brian