kubernetes/kops · error

error listing networks: %v

Error message

error listing networks: %v

What it means

Fires in listNetworks when the GCE Networks().List call fails while discovering the cluster's VPC network during resource discovery/teardown — a GCE API, credentials, or network failure listing networks.

Source

Thrown at pkg/resources/gce/gce.go:1214

	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	networkUrls := make(map[string]bool)
	for _, t := range templates {
		for _, ni := range t.Properties.NetworkInterfaces {
			if ni.Network != "" {
				networkUrls[ni.Network] = true
			}
		}
	}

	c := d.gceCloud

	var resourceTrackers []*resources.Resource

	networks, err := c.Compute().Networks().List(c.Project())
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("error listing networks: %v", err)
	}

	for _, o := range networks.Items {
		if o.Name != gce.SafeTruncatedClusterName(d.clusterName, 63) {
			klog.V(8).Infof("skipping network with name %q", o.Name)
			continue
		}

		if !networkUrls[o.SelfLink] {
			klog.Warningf("skipping network %q because it didn't match any instance template", o.SelfLink)
			continue
		}

		resourceTracker := &resources.Resource{
			Name:    o.Name,
			ID:      o.Name,
			Type:    typeNetwork,
			Deleter: deleteNetwork,

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Check GCP credentials and compute.networks.list permission
2. Retry after transient API errors
3. Verify the project is correct and accessible

Example fix

// before
return nil, fmt.Errorf("error listing networks: %v", err)
// after
return nil, fmt.Errorf("error listing networks in project %s: %w", c.Project(), err)

// preflight with same credentials before mutating anything
_, err := computeClient.Networks.List(project).Do()
if err != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("preflight: cannot list networks in %s; check API/permissions: %w", project, err)
}

func isPermissionDenied(err error) bool {
	ge, ok := err.(*googleapi.Error)
	return ok && ge.Code == 403
}

networks, err := c.Compute().Networks().List(c.Project())
if err != nil {
	if isPermissionDenied(err) {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("needs compute.networks.list in %s: %w", c.Project(), err)
	}
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("error listing networks: %w", err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Networks().List returns 403 (missing compute.networks.list), Compute API disabled or quota/billing issue, invalid project, or transient API failure. Note the code indexes networks.Items without a nil check, so an empty-but-successful response shape change could also matter — but this specific error only fires on the API error path.

Common situations: kops credentials with compute rights missing in the target project; wrong project ID in config; Compute Engine API not enabled; GCE API outage during delete cluster.

Related errors

• error deleting network %s: %v
• failed to parse subnet CIDR %q: %w
• error listing Routes: %w
• error listing Addresses: %v
• error listing subnetworks: %v

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9707fd7ddd9ce383. Report an issue: GitHub.