What causes "unable to find region" in kubernetes/kops?

Export OS_REGION_NAME in the environment (e.g. 'export OS_REGION_NAME=RegionOne') before starting the process

unable to find region

Error message

unable to find region

What it means

New() for the OpenStack nodeidentifier reads the region from the OS_REGION_NAME environment variable and fails if it is empty. The region is required to build region-scoped OpenStack service clients (nova).

Source

Thrown at pkg/nodeidentity/openstack/identify.go:59

)

// nodeIdentifier identifies a node
type nodeIdentifier struct {
	novaClient   *gophercloud.ServiceClient
	cache        expirationcache.Store
	cacheEnabled bool
}

// New creates and returns a nodeidentity.Identifier for Nodes running on OpenStack
func New(cacheNodeidentityInfo bool) (nodeidentity.Identifier, error) {
	env, err := openstack.AuthOptionsFromEnv()
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

	region := os.Getenv("OS_REGION_NAME")
	if region == "" {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("unable to find region")
	}

	provider, err := openstack.NewClient(env.IdentityEndpoint)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	ua := gophercloud.UserAgent{}
	ua.Prepend("kops/nodeidentity")
	provider.UserAgent = ua
	klog.V(4).Infof("Using user-agent %s", ua.Join())

	// node-controller should be able to renew it tokens against OpenStack API
	env.AllowReauth = true

	err = openstack.Authenticate(context.TODO(), provider, env)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

Export OS_REGION_NAME in the environment (e.g. 'export OS_REGION_NAME=RegionOne') before starting the process
Source the full openrc file that includes OS_REGION_NAME, not just the auth subset
If using clouds.yaml, set the region_name in the cloud profile and ensure the env reflects it

Example fix

// before
# openrc.sh missing OS_REGION_NAME
// after
export OS_REGION_NAME="RegionOne"

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

if os.Getenv("OS_REGION_NAME") == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("OS_REGION_NAME must be set before initializing the openstack nodeidentifier")
}

Try / catch

identifier, err := openstack.New()
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "unable to find region") {
    return fmt.Errorf("openstack nodeidentifier init failed: set OS_REGION_NAME (openrc): %w", err)
}

Prevention

Source the complete openrc file (including OS_REGION_NAME) in deployment manifests/entrypoints
Add a startup preflight that asserts required OS_* env vars are present
When using clouds.yaml, mirror region_name into OS_REGION_NAME for components that read it

When it happens

Trigger: Constructing the OpenStack nodeidentifier (nodeidentity/openstack.New) in an environment where OS_REGION_NAME is unset or empty string, even though other OS_* auth variables are set.

Common situations: OpenStack credentials sourced from openrc files that omit OS_REGION_NAME, running in containers/pods where only auth env vars were copied, or clouds.yaml-based auth setups where region was expected elsewhere.

Understand the failure class

Background: "environment variable is not set" and "Missing keys in environment" errors: what missing required env var messages mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/237a613bdfb8d9cf. Report an issue: GitHub.