maas-cli ipaddresses reserve network=CIDR error message unhelpful

[Dimiter Naydenov]

I tried using the MAAS CLI to reserve an IP address for a container Juju deploys, and this is what happened:

$ maas maas-root ipaddresses reserve network=192.168.50.0/24
No network found matching 192.168.50.2/24

But then again:
$ maas maas-root networks read
[
    {
        "description": "Main MAAS network",
        "ip": "192.168.50.0",
        "netmask": "255.255.255.0",
        "vlan_tag": null,
        "resource_uri": "/MAAS/api/1.0/networks/maas/",
        "name": "maas"
    },
(..cut..)
]

After discussing the issue on #maas on FreeNode, it turned out my 192.168.50.0/24 network does not have a static IP range configured, only DHCP one. Configuring a static range using the MAAS UI and re-running the command worked:
$ maas maas-root ipaddresses reserve network=192.168.50.0/24
{
    "alloc_type": 4,
    "ip": "192.168.50.132",
    "resource_uri": "/MAAS/api/1.0/ipaddresses/",
    "created": "2014-09-09T12:38:40.015"
}

So, if the error message was more helpful, like "No static IP range configured for network 192.168.50.0/24" would have been much more helpful for users.

[Dimiter Naydenov (dimitern)]

Any chance for fixing this in time for 1.7.1?

[Dimiter Naydenov (dimitern)]

If this simple to fix can it get prioritized higher? Juju is not hitting this currently, because we list the network information including the static range bounds, so Juju won't try to allocate addresses on networks without a static range defined. That workaround was done because of this issue. But it will be much better UX-wise if the error message got fixed.