vitessio/vitess · error

--cells-no-recovery contains cell

Error message

--cells-no-recovery contains cell %q which does not exist in the topology (known cells: %v)

What it means

At vtorc startup, the --cells-no-recovery flag lists cells where primary health recovery should not run. validateCellsNoRecovery cross-checks every listed cell against the cells known to the topology and fails fast if any cell does not exist, including the known cell list in the message.

Solutions

1. List actual cells: vtctl --topo_implementation ... GetCellsInfo (or topo GetKnownCells) and correct --cells-no-recovery to match exactly
2. Remove decommissioned cells from the flag
3. Verify vtorc is connected to the correct topology (global vs local) — the cells must exist in the topo vtorc reads
4. Restart vtorc after fixing the flag; validation is re-run at OpenTabletDiscovery

Example fix

// before
--cells-no-recovery zone1,zone2,zone3   # zone3 does not exist
// after
--cells-no-recovery zone1,zone2

# Validate --cells-no-recovery against the topology before starting vtorc
KNOWN=$(vtctldclient GetCellsInfo 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $1}')
for cell in $(echo "$CELLS_NO_RECOVERY" | tr ',' ' '); do
  if ! echo "$KNOWN" | grep -qx "$cell"; then
    echo "cell $cell not in topology"; exit 1
  fi
done

When it happens

Trigger: OpenTabletDiscovery -> validateCellsNoRecovery when a cell named in --cells-no-recovery is absent from topo.GetKnownCells — typically a typo, a decommissioned cell, or a vtorc instance connected to a different topo than the cells belong to.

Common situations: Copy-pasting vtorc config between environments (staging vs prod cells), renaming cells during a datacenter migration, or stale flag values left after cell removal.

Related errors

• failed to read primary instance
• failed to read shard primary for
• invalid key range while parsing clusters to watch
• keyspace not found
• no local cells have been created yet

AI-assisted analysis of vitessio/vitess@01a25a7d17 (2026-09-01). Data as JSON: /api/errors/58156d584a2ea1d6. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at go/vt/vtorc/logic/tablet_discovery.go:162

	}
	// Trim whitespace so that "--cells-no-recovery=cell1, cell2" works the
	// same as "--cells-no-recovery=cell1,cell2". pflag's StringSliceVar
	// splits on commas but does not strip surrounding whitespace.
	for i, cell := range cellsNoRecovery {
		cellsNoRecovery[i] = strings.TrimSpace(cell)
	}
	knownCells, err := ts.GetKnownCells(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		log.Warn(fmt.Sprintf("failed to get known cells while validating --cells-no-recovery, skipping validation: %v", err))
		return nil
	}
	knownCellSet := make(map[string]struct{}, len(knownCells))
	for _, cell := range knownCells {
		knownCellSet[cell] = struct{}{}
	}
	for _, cell := range cellsNoRecovery {
		if _, ok := knownCellSet[cell]; !ok {
			return fmt.Errorf("--cells-no-recovery contains cell %q which does not exist in the topology (known cells: %v)", cell, knownCells)
		}
	}
	cellsNoRecoveryValidated.Store(true)
	return nil
}

// initializeShardsToWatch parses the --clusters_to_watch flag-value
// into a map of keyspace/shards.
func initializeShardsToWatch() error {
	shardsToWatch = make(map[string][]*topodatapb.KeyRange)
	if len(clustersToWatch) == 0 {
		return nil
	}

	for _, ks := range clustersToWatch {
		if strings.Contains(ks, "/") && !strings.HasSuffix(ks, "/") {
			// Validate keyspace/shard parses.
			k, s, err := topoproto.ParseKeyspaceShard(ks)

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