Cirrus-ci-docs: Windows container `Failed to start: FAILED_PRECONDITION: Async operation failed with provisioning state: Failed`

[ppaulweber]

Hello, since 3 weeks I've discovered for my cirrus-ci integrations the following behavior:
All of my Windows-based builds fail with the message

Failed to start: FAILED_PRECONDITION: Async operation failed with provisioning state: Failed

Was there a change of the Windows-based container handling?
As a task/job reference, see: https://cirrus-ci.com/task/5199234603155456

[fkorotkov]

@ppaulweber there were no changes to Windows builds recently. This error comes directly from Azure API and it wasn't marked as retryable. Have you tried to re-run the task? In the meantime let me add such error to a list of retryable failures.

[ppaulweber]

@fkorotkov thanks for the fast reply. Yes I've tried several times. In very rare cases the build succeeds but most of the time the same error message appears. Could it be a resource consumption issue/problem/restriction?

[fkorotkov]

Interesting. I saw a similar behavior of failing to start a container on Azure when a container is pretty outdated. Azure stores locally 3 latests versions of microsoft/windowsservercore:ltsc2016 so they perform the best. cirrusci/windowsservercore:2016 is also updated frequently enough to catch up with microsoft/windowsservercore:ltsc2016. If your container is big and was built a long time ago it will be worth to rebuild it just to update the base layers.

[fkorotkov]

BTW I've just rebuilt cirrusci/windowsservercore:2016 to update the base layer. 😅

[fkorotkov]

@ppaulweber could you please try to rebuild the base image and re-open the issue if it won't help?

[ppaulweber]

@fkorotkov sorry for the delay ... thanks for the quick hint regarding the updating of the base layers. I'm already in the process of doing it, and will retry then to rebuild the tasks/jobs in question and report here back to you.

[ppaulweber]

@fkorotkov the task/job builds are running again :tada: thanks again :clap:

[fkorotkov]

Wonderful news! 🎉🎉🎉