oslo.config 3.21: every service failing with AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'startswith'

[David Moreau Simard]

In RDO's CI environment, as soon as oslo.config 3.21 landed, every OpenStack services started failing with stack traces similar to:

====
nova-conductor[13354]: Traceback (most recent call last):
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/bin/nova-conductor", line 10, in <module>
nova-conductor[13354]: sys.exit(main())
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/nova/cmd/conductor.py", line 34, in main
nova-conductor[13354]: config.parse_args(sys.argv)
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/nova/config.py", line 47, in parse_args
nova-conductor[13354]: default_config_files=default_config_files)
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oslo_config/cfg.py", line 2338, in __call__
nova-conductor[13354]: else sys.argv[1:])
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oslo_config/cfg.py", line 2966, in _parse_cli_opts
nova-conductor[13354]: return self._parse_config_files()
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oslo_config/cfg.py", line 2983, in _parse_config_files
nova-conductor[13354]: ConfigParser._parse_file(config_file, namespace)
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oslo_config/cfg.py", line 1778, in _parse_file
nova-conductor[13354]: config_file = _fixpath(config_file)
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oslo_config/cfg.py", line 601, in _fixpath
nova-conductor[13354]: return os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser(p))
nova-conductor[13354]: File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/posixpath.py", line 261, in expanduser
nova-conductor[13354]: if not path.startswith('~'):
nova-conductor[13354]: AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'startswith'
====

It looks like this could be related to the patch provided in review https://review.openstack.org/#/c/400751/5

Full list of stack traces are available here (ctrl+f startswith):
https://ci.centos.org/artifacts/rdo/weirdo-master-promote-puppet-openstack-scenario001/758/weirdo-project/logs/syslog.txt.gz

We did not witness this error prior to 3.21 and had successful test runs with 3.19.

Please let me know if you need more information, this is a critical issue for us.

Please let me know if you need additional information.

[David Moreau Simard (dmsimard)]

https://review.openstack.org/#/c/400667/ actually sounds more like the possible culprit here.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Related fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/408800

[David Moreau Simard (dmsimard)]

Closing this, it turned out to be a human error.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Change abandoned by David Moreau Simard (<email address hidden>) on branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/408800