hashicorp/nomad · error

job not found

Error message

job not found

What it means

The Job.Evaluate RPC looked up the job by ID and namespace in the state store and got nil — no such job exists. Nomad throws this plain 'job not found' because it cannot force an evaluation for a job that was never registered or has been deregistered.

Source

Thrown at nomad/job_endpoint.go:714

	}

	// Validate the arguments
	if args.JobID == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("missing job ID for evaluation")
	}

	// Lookup the job
	snap, err := j.srv.fsm.State().Snapshot()
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	ws := memdb.NewWatchSet()
	job, err := snap.JobByID(ws, args.RequestNamespace(), args.JobID)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	if job == nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("job not found")
	}

	if job.IsPeriodic() {
		return fmt.Errorf("can't evaluate periodic job")
	} else if job.IsParameterized() {
		return fmt.Errorf("can't evaluate parameterized job")
	}

	forceRescheduleAllocs := make(map[string]*structs.DesiredTransition)

	if args.EvalOptions.ForceReschedule {
		// Find any failed allocs that could be force rescheduled
		allocs, err := snap.AllocsByJob(ws, args.RequestNamespace(), args.JobID, false)
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}

		for _, alloc := range allocs {

View on GitHub (pinned to 482b49bf1a)

Solutions

1. Confirm the job exists: nomad job status <id> or GET /v1/job/<id>
2. Check the namespace (NOMAD_NAMESPACE or -namespace flag) matches where the job lives
3. Re-register the job first if it was deregistered, then evaluate
4. Correct the job ID in the calling script

Example fix

// before
client.Jobs().Evaluate("web-app", nil)
// after
if _, _, err := client.Jobs().Info("web-app", nil); err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("job web-app not found: %w", err)
}
client.Jobs().Evaluate("web-app", nil)

_, _, err := client.Jobs().Info(jobID, nil)
if err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("job %q not found before evaluate: %w", jobID, err) }

_, _, err := client.Jobs().Evaluate(jobID, nil)
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "job not found") {
	return fmt.Errorf("job %s missing; re-register it first", jobID)
}

When it happens

Trigger: POST /v1/job/<id>/evaluate (or periodic force) where the job ID is misspelled, the job was deregistered, or the request namespace does not contain the job.

Common situations: CI pipelines evaluating a job after a failed deploy removed it; wrong namespace in token/policy resolution; idempotent scripts re-running after job cleanup; purge=true deregistration followed by a forced evaluation.

Understand the failure class

Background: 'Could not be found', 'does not exist', 'not found in database': the resource-not-found family when an ID, slug, key, or URI lookup comes back empty — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• variable not found
• eval not found
• root key not found
• variable doesn't exist
• Unknown node

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/nomad@482b49bf1a (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/06b38153308bedc5. Report an issue: GitHub.