hashicorp/nomad · error

missing job ID for evaluation

Error message

missing job ID for evaluation

What it means

The Job.Evaluate RPC forces a new evaluation for a job, and this guard rejects requests with an empty JobID before any state lookup. Nomad throws it because evaluation is always scoped to a specific job; an empty ID is an invalid client request.

Source

Thrown at nomad/job_endpoint.go:700

	j.srv.MeasureRPCRate("job", structs.RateMetricWrite, args)
	if authErr != nil {
		return structs.ErrPermissionDenied
	}
	defer metrics.MeasureSince([]string{"nomad", "job", "evaluate"}, time.Now())

	// Check for submit-job permissions
	if aclObj, err := j.srv.ResolveACL(args); err != nil {
		return err
	} else if !aclObj.AllowNsOpAnyOf(args.RequestNamespace(),
		acl.NamespaceCapabilitySubmitJob,
		acl.NamespaceCapabilityEvaluateJob,
	) {
		return structs.ErrPermissionDenied
	}

	// 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")

View on GitHub (pinned to 482b49bf1a)

Solutions

1. Set JobID on the JobEvaluateRequest (or use the HTTP endpoint path /v1/job/<id>/evaluate which fills it in)
2. Validate the job ID variable is non-empty before issuing the request
3. Use the official nomad/api client Jobs().Evaluate(id, ...) rather than hand-built RPC payloads

Example fix

// before
_, _, err := client.Jobs().Evaluate("", nil)
// after
jobID := os.Getenv("NOMAD_JOB_ID")
if jobID == "" { return fmt.Errorf("job id required") }
_, _, err := client.Jobs().Evaluate(jobID, nil)

if jobID == "" {
	return fmt.Errorf("jobID must be non-empty before calling Evaluate")
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the Evaluate RPC (POST /v1/job/<id>/evaluate) where the request body's JobID field is empty — typically building the JobEvaluateRequest manually instead of letting the HTTP handler populate it from the URL path.

Common situations: Custom automation constructing api.JobEvaluateRequest{} without setting JobID; SDK wrappers that drop the path parameter; refactored scripts after switching from job prefix endpoints.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• missing secret ID
• namespace cannot contain template delimiters or parenthesis
• wait config is nil or empty
• CSI.ControllerAttachVolume: VolumeID is required
• CSI.ControllerAttachVolume: ClientCSINodeID is required

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/nomad@482b49bf1a (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4360cb9b895697fb. Report an issue: GitHub.