kubernetes/kops · error

error listing VPCs: %v

Error message

error listing VPCs: %v

What it means

DescribeVPC wraps ec2 DescribeVpcs failure while discovering the cluster's VPC by the cluster's filter tags. It fires when the EC2 API call errors (credentials, throttling, region mismatch); the per-filter loop aborts on the first failing query.

Source

Thrown at pkg/resources/aws/vpc.go:87

	}
	op.Dump.VPC = vpc

	return nil
}

func DescribeVPC(cloud fi.Cloud, clusterName string) (*ec2types.Vpc, error) {
	ctx := context.TODO()
	c := cloud.(awsup.AWSCloud)

	vpcs := make(map[string]*ec2types.Vpc)
	klog.V(2).Info("Listing EC2 VPC")
	for _, filters := range buildEC2FiltersForCluster(clusterName) {
		request := &ec2.DescribeVpcsInput{
			Filters: filters,
		}
		response, err := c.EC2().DescribeVpcs(ctx, request)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("error listing VPCs: %v", err)
		}

		for _, vpc := range response.Vpcs {
			vpcs[aws.ToString(vpc.VpcId)] = &vpc
		}
	}

	switch len(vpcs) {
	case 0:
		return nil, nil
	case 1:
		return vpcs[slices.Collect(maps.Keys(vpcs))[0]], nil
	default:
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("found multiple VPCs for cluster %q: %v", clusterName, slices.Collect(maps.Keys(vpcs)))
	}
}

func ListVPCs(cloud fi.Cloud, clusterName string) ([]*resources.Resource, error) {

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Check EC2 credentials and ec2:DescribeVpcs permission
2. Retry after throttling or transient network errors
3. Verify the region matches where the cluster's VPC lives

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at pkg/resources/aws/vpc.go:87 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0e4da0004ad4b30b. Report an issue: GitHub.