What causes "failed to deploy schedule: %v" in Netflix/chaosmonkey?

Read the wrapped underlying error to determine which stage failed (timezone, publish, cron registration).

failed to deploy schedule: %v

Error message

failed to deploy schedule: %v

What it means

After the schedule is populated and filtered by constraints, do() calls deploySchedule to publish it to chaosmonkey-api and register it with the local cron. If deploySchedule returns an error (timezone lookup, publish failure, or cron registration failure), it is wrapped with this message. It is a wrapper, so the root cause always follows the colon.

Source

Thrown at command/schedule.go:72

	}

}

// do is the actual implementation for the Schedule function
func do(d deploy.Deployment, g chaosmonkey.AppConfigGetter, ss schedstore.SchedStore, cfg *config.Monkey, cons schedule.Constrainer, apps []string) error {

	s := schedule.New()
	err := s.Populate(d, g, cfg, apps)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to populate schedule: %v", err)
	}

	// Filter out terminations that violate constrains
	sched := cons.Filter(*s)

	err = deploySchedule(&sched, ss, cfg)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to deploy schedule: %v", err)
	}

	return nil
}

// deploySchedule publishes the schedule to chaosmonkey-api
// and registers the schedule with the local cron
func deploySchedule(s *schedule.Schedule, ss schedstore.SchedStore, cfg *config.Monkey) error {
	loc, err := cfg.Location()
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("deploySchedule: could not retrieve local timezone: %v", err)
	}

	today := time.Now().In(loc)

	err = ss.Publish(today, s)

	if err != nil {

View on GitHub (pinned to eaa28fb761)

Solutions

Read the wrapped underlying error to determine which stage failed (timezone, publish, cron registration).
If it is the timezone error, install tzdata or set the TZ environment variable correctly in the container.
If it is the publish error, check schedstore backend availability and write permissions.
If it is cron registration, validate the schedule's cron expressions and times.

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

// before deploying, verify timezone and store availability
if _, err := cfg.Location(); err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("precheck: timezone unavailable: %v", err)
}
if err := ss.Ping(); err != nil { // if your SchedStore exposes a health check
    return fmt.Errorf("precheck: schedstore unavailable: %v", err)
}

Try / catch

if err := do(dep, appCfgGetter, schedStore, cfg, constrainer, apps); err != nil {
    if strings.HasPrefix(err.Error(), "failed to deploy schedule:") {
        cause := errors.Unwrap(err)
        log.Errorf("deploy failed: %v", cause)
        switch {
        case strings.Contains(cause.Error(), "timezone"):
            log.Error("install tzdata or fix TZ")
        case strings.Contains(cause.Error(), "publish"):
            log.Error("check schedstore availability/permissions")
        }
        return err
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Install tzdata in the runtime image so cfg.Location() succeeds.
Run a preflight check of the schedstore backend before deploying.
Check service-account write permissions to schedule storage.
Log the unwrapped cause to distinguish timezone vs publish vs cron-registration failures.

When it happens

Trigger: Running the schedule command when deploySchedule fails: cfg.Location() cannot resolve the local timezone, ss.Publish fails to persist the schedule, or registerWithCron fails to register entries with the cron scheduler.

Common situations: Server missing timezone data (e.g. no tzdata in a scratch/container image), schedstore (Datastore/API) unavailable or permission-denied, or invalid schedule entries that the cron library rejects.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of Netflix/chaosmonkey@eaa28fb761 (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/09d062aa85184f83. Report an issue: GitHub.