Freeing up a Volume from a Nova server that errored

Trial and error. Its a key part of getting work done in my field, and I make my share of errors. Today, I tried to create a virtual machine in Nova using a bad glance image that I had converted to a bootable volume:

The error message was:

 {u'message': u'Build of instance d64fdd07-748c-4e27-b212-59e8cef9d6bf aborted: Block Device Mapping is Invalid.', u'code': 500, u'created': u'2018-01-31T03:10:56Z'}

The VM could not release the volume.

$  openstack server remove volume d64fdd07-748c-4e27-b212-59e8cef9d6bf de4909df-e95c-4a54-af5c-c24a26146a89
Can't detach root device volume (HTTP 403) (Request-ID: req-725ce3fa-36e5-4dd8-b10f-7521c91a5c32)

So I deleted the instance:

  openstack server delete d64fdd07-748c-4e27-b212-59e8cef9d6bf

But when I went to list the volumes:

+--------------------------------------+-------------+--------+------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| ID                                   | Name        | Status | Size | Attached to                                                   |
+--------------------------------------+-------------+--------+------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| de4909df-e95c-4a54-af5c-c24a26146a89 | xxxx        | in-use |   80 | Attached to d64fdd07-748c-4e27-b212-59e8cef9d6bf on /dev/vda  |
+--------------------------------------+-------------+--------+------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
$ openstack volume delete de4909df-e95c-4a54-af5c-c24a26146a89
Failed to delete volume with name or ID 'de4909df-e95c-4a54-af5c-c24a26146a89': Invalid volume: Volume status must be available or error or error_restoring or error_extending and must not be migrating, attached, belong to a group or have snapshots. (HTTP 400) (Request-ID: req-f651299d-740c-4ac9-9f52-8a603eace8f6)
1 of 1 volumes failed to delete.

To unwedge it I need to run:

$ cinder reset-state --attach-status detached de4909df-e95c-4a54-af5c-c24a26146a89
Policy doesn't allow volume_extension:volume_admin_actions:reset_status to be performed. (HTTP 403) (Request-ID: req-8bdff31a-7745-4e5e-a449-a5dac5d87f70)
ERROR: Unable to reset the state for the specified entity(s).

SO, finally, I had to get an admin account (role admin on any project will work, still…)

. ~/devel/openstack/salab/rduv3-admin.rc
cinder  reset-state --attach-status detached de4909df-e95c-4a54-af5c-c24a26146a89

And now (as my non admin user)

$ openstack volume list  
+--------------------------------------+-------------+-----------+------+-----------------------------------------------+
| ID                                   | Name        | Status    | Size | Attached to                                   |
+--------------------------------------+-------------+-----------+------+-----------------------------------------------+
| de4909df-e95c-4a54-af5c-c24a26146a89 | xxxx        | available |   80 |                                               |
+--------------------------------------+-------------+-----------+------+-----------------------------------------------+
$ openstack volume delete xxxx
$ openstack volume list  
+--------------------------------------+-------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------------+
| ID                                   | Name        | Status | Size | Attached to                                   |
+--------------------------------------+-------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------+-------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------------+

I talked with the Cinder team about the policy for volume_extension:volume_admin_actions:reset_status and they seem to think that it is too unsafe for an average user to be able to perform. Thus, a “force delete” like this would need to be a new operation, or a different flag on an existing operation.

We’ll work on it.

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