tabular format does not give enough details about machine provisioning errors

[Marco Ceppi]

Since tabular format is going to be default it needs to elevate machine provisioning errors. When running `juju status --format=tabular` or using the Juju flag for status 2.0, when a machine fails to provision this is what's provided (see machine 5)

http://paste.ubuntu.com/11933352/

When --format yaml is used, the user will actually see the error

http://paste.ubuntu.com/11933358/

It seems agent-state-info is the key, but it should be easy to determine that when an a provisioning error is made the STATE field (empty atm) could have an "error" or "provisioning error" if error is already used. As to the untrained eye it seems like GCE is just taking a long ass time to create the instance since inst-id is pending.

[Eric Snow (ericsnowcurrently)]

From what I can tell, the message in "agent-state-info" indicates that provisioning failed. If that were the case then AgentState should have been set to "error". [1] Instead it appears to be unset. This implies to me that there is a bug in how instance provisioning failures are handled. I'm going to look into that here. If it turns out I've misunderstood then I'll circle back to injecting a more meaningful message in this case.

[1] https://github.com/juju/juju/blob/ab40176fcf72/worker/provisioner/provisioner_task.go#L703

[Eric Snow (ericsnowcurrently)]

I've verified that the right thing isn't happening here. If I call task.setErrorStatus (and return) at the beginning of the startMachine method (in worker/provisioner/provisioner_task.go) then I get exactly the same situation. Status reports the correct "agent-state-info" but "agent-state" is not set. So I'm on the right trail.

[Eric Snow (ericsnowcurrently)]

TestProvisionerSetsErrorStatusWhenStartInstanceFailed (in worker/provisioner) should cover any direct problems so I'm guessing that there's an indirect problem here. Most likely there's some code that sets the status after provisioning happens.

[Eric Snow (ericsnowcurrently)]

Ah, there's a silenced panic coming out of task.setErrorStatus (in worker/provision). Getting closer!

[Eric Snow (ericsnowcurrently)]

hmm. Looks like there wasn't a panic after all.

[Eric Snow (ericsnowcurrently)]

At this point I suspect that the status formatter isn't pulling the right info or is doing so in a selective way (incorrectly).

[Eric Snow (ericsnowcurrently)]

http://reviews.vapour.ws/r/2560/