kubernetes/kops · error

error getting TargetPool %q: %v

Error message

error getting TargetPool %q: %v

What it means

In TargetPool.Find, kOps looks up the GCE TargetPool by name to compare actual vs desired state. Non-NotFound errors from TargetPools().Get are wrapped in this error. NotFound is treated as 'target pool doesn't exist yet' and returns nil,nil instead.

Source

Thrown at upup/pkg/fi/cloudup/gcetasks/targetpool.go:54

	Lifecycle fi.Lifecycle
}

var _ fi.CompareWithID = (*TargetPool)(nil)

func (e *TargetPool) CompareWithID() *string {
	return e.Name
}

func (e *TargetPool) Find(c *fi.CloudupContext) (*TargetPool, error) {
	cloud := c.T.Cloud.(gce.GCECloud)
	name := fi.ValueOf(e.Name)

	r, err := cloud.Compute().TargetPools().Get(cloud.Project(), cloud.Region(), name)
	if err != nil {
		if gce.IsNotFound(err) {
			return nil, nil
		}
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("error getting TargetPool %q: %v", name, err)
	}

	actual := &TargetPool{}
	actual.Name = new(r.Name)

	// Avoid spurious changes
	actual.HealthCheck = e.HealthCheck
	actual.Lifecycle = e.Lifecycle

	return actual, nil
}

func (e *TargetPool) Run(c *fi.CloudupContext) error {
	return fi.CloudupDefaultDeltaRunMethod(e, c)
}

func (_ *TargetPool) CheckChanges(a, e, changes *TargetPool) error {
	if fi.ValueOf(e.Name) == "" {

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Read the wrapped %v error to distinguish 403 vs 5xx vs network failure
2. Verify the service account has compute.targetPools.get IAM permission
3. Confirm the cluster spec region matches the target pool's region
4. Retry after transient GCP API failures
5. Refresh credentials if the error is auth-related

gcloud compute target-pools describe <name> --region <region> >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo 'will be created'

if gce.IsNotFound(err) { return nil, nil } // only non-404 errors matter; inspect code 403 vs 5xx

When it happens

Trigger: Compute().TargetPools().Get(project, region, name) returns an error other than 404: API outage, permission denied, malformed name, or region mismatch.

Common situations: GCP IAM role lacking compute.targetPools.get; regional API endpoint temporarily unavailable; region configured in the cluster spec differs from where the target pool lives; expired service-account credentials.

Related errors

• error creating TargetPool %q: %v
• error creating TargetPool: %v
• cannot apply changes to TargetPool: %v
• creating gce IPAM controller: %w
• error building compute API client: %v

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f068bfd555644172. Report an issue: GitHub.