kubernetes/kops · error

could not initialize zones

Error message

could not initialize zones

What it means

findVPCInfo (backing FindVPCInfo) returns this when the zones slice passed in is empty — kOps cannot map subnets of the network to availability zones, so it refuses to build VPCInfo. It is a pre-condition failure, not an API error.

Source

Thrown at upup/pkg/fi/cloudup/openstack/cloud.go:577

func (c *openstackCloud) DNS() (dnsprovider.Interface, error) {
	provider, err := dnsprovider.GetDnsProvider(designate.ProviderName, nil)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("error building (Designate) DNS provider: %v", err)
	}
	return provider, nil
}

// FindVPCInfo list subnets in network
func (c *openstackCloud) FindVPCInfo(id string) (*fi.VPCInfo, error) {
	return findVPCInfo(c, id, c.zones)
}

func findVPCInfo(c OpenstackCloud, id string, zones []string) (*fi.VPCInfo, error) {
	vpcInfo := &fi.VPCInfo{}
	// Find subnets in the network
	{
		if len(zones) == 0 {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("could not initialize zones")
		}
		klog.V(2).Infof("Calling ListSubnets for subnets in Network %q", id)
		opt := subnets.ListOpts{
			NetworkID: id,
		}
		subnets, err := c.ListSubnets(opt)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("error listing subnets in network %q: %v", id, err)
		}

		for index, subnet := range subnets {
			zone := zones[int(index)%len(zones)]
			subnetInfo := &fi.SubnetInfo{
				ID:   subnet.ID,
				CIDR: subnet.CIDR,
				Zone: zone,
			}
			vpcInfo.Subnets = append(vpcInfo.Subnets, subnetInfo)

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Define zones in the cluster spec (kops set cluster.spec topology / zones) before update/create
2. Verify the spec parses zones correctly (kops get cluster -oyaml | grep zones)
3. If invoking findVPCInfo programmatically, pass a non-empty zones slice

Example fix

// before
zones: []
// after
zones: ["nova-1", "nova-2"]

if len(zones) == 0 {
    return nil, fmt.Errorf("zones must be non-empty before FindVPCInfo")
}

// go
vpcInfo, err := cloud.FindVPCInfo(netID)
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "could not initialize zones") {
    return fmt.Errorf("define zones in the cluster spec: %w", err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: FindVPCInfo called for a network id with zones == nil/empty, e.g. cluster spec defines no zones or zones were not propagated before the VPC lookup.

Common situations: Cluster spec missing topology/zones entries; zones list dropped during spec parsing; caller invoking FindVPCInfo directly in tests/tools without zone data.

Related errors

• failed to find cluster dns zone
• exactly one 'admin' SSH public key can be specified when run
• subnet %s not found in network %s
• cannot determine control-plane zones
• error finding openstack region: %v

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1142ee4597f2c6bf. Report an issue: GitHub.