Re: strange git problems on turaco

On Mon, Dec 02, 2024 at 02:20:35AM +0100, Tomas Vondra wrote:
> turaco seems to be having some strange git issues - some of the
> buildfarm runs fail like this:
>
>
> turaco:REL_16_STABLE [22:41:11] OK
> Sun Dec 1 22:41:27 2024: buildfarm run for turaco:REL_17_STABLE starting
> turaco:REL_17_STABLE [22:41:27] checking out source ...
> Missing checked out branch bf_REL_17_STABLE:
> fatal: not a git repository (or any parent up to mount point /mnt)
> Stopping at filesystem boundary (GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM not set).
> turaco:REL_17_STABLE [22:41:32] failed at stage pgsql-Git
> Sun Dec 1 22:41:33 2024: buildfarm run for turaco:HEAD starting
> turaco:HEAD [22:41:33] checking out source ...
>
>
> I initially suspected this might be due to aging storage (SD card on
> rpi), but I replaced that, and there's nothing strange in dmesg. Also,
> other branches seem to be working fine ...
>
> Any ideas what could be causing this?

I had this happen ~9 times on the host of my AIX buildfarm members. Example:
https://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=mandrill&dt=2024-07-10%2019%3A51%3A28

I figured it was some system problem, so I didn't root-cause it. I carry the
following workaround in my fork of the buildfarm client code. The unknown
problem caused failure reports and work stoppage ~4 times before I installed
this workaround, then logs show the workaround prevented damage 5 times. The
last "removed intruder .git" log message appeared on 2024-07-23. There was no
kernel reboot, and logs don't point to buildfarm client processes getting
involuntary termination, either.

diff --git a/PGBuild/SCM.pm b/PGBuild/SCM.pm
index dcfd180..2cd610a 100644
--- a/PGBuild/SCM.pm
+++ b/PGBuild/SCM.pm
@@ -1059,9 +1059,19 @@ sub _update_target
my @gitlog;

# If a run crashed during copy_source(), repair.
- if (-d "./git-save" && !-d "$target/.git")
+ if (-d "./git-save")
{
+ # As of 2024-07-13, the following has happened about four times in the
+ # last month, to different gcc111 animals. Despite no known crash,
+ # there's a git-save directory containing the proper git repo, and
+ # there's a bogus .git missing most content. Remove the bogus one.
+ # This is deeply hacky, but it beats buildfarm report noise and manual
+ # intervention.
+ if (rmtree("$target/.git") > 0) {
+ print "removed intruder .git\n" if $verbose;
+ }
move "./git-save", "$target/.git";
+ print "restored git-save\n" if $verbose;
}

chdir $target;