Cannot wait for workspace to initialize: workspace is not initializing or ready

[shayani]

Bug description

When trying to start a container, often it fails with error: "cannot wait for workspace to initialize: workspace is not initializing or ready".

Example container: eventaservo-eventaservo-xrkag8heoko

.gitpod.yaml file: https://github.com/eventaservo/eventaservo/blob/main/.gitpod.yml

Steps to reproduce

Click on container name on the dashboard.

1. Create a workspace using the repo (below)
2. Wait for it to start
3. Stop it
4. Try to restart it

Workspace affected

eventaservo-eventaservo-xrkag8heoko

Expected behavior

The workspace should open normally.

Example repository

https://github.com/eventaservo/eventaservo

Anything else?

No response

[kylos101]

👋 hey there @shayani, I updated the issue description with some details (sample repo and steps to recreate). May I ask you to validate if I am correct, that your problem is basically you're not always able to restart workspaces that were previously running and stopped?

[kylos101]

And, thanks to @axonasif for relaying this issue. 🙏

[kylos101]

FYI, I just tried starting the same repo (above), and got:

On https://eventaservo-eventaservo-giocbj09bak.ws-us67.gitpod.io/:

Oh, no! Something went wrong!
cannot initialize workspace: cannot initialize workspace: prebuild initializer: prebuild initializer: openfdat /dst/.docker-root/overlay2/16de1d5c16d817dc1909f93a51ecb64e0a5e51e2ec1fe0d2dbe8db8d0fd92c53/work/work: permission denied

Which is actually this issue: #10569

Going back to this comment, please let us know how you generally go about recreating the issue?

[shayani]

👋 hey there @shayani, I updated the issue description with some details (sample repo and steps to recreate). May I ask you to validate if I am correct, that your problem is basically you're not always able to restart workspaces that were previously running and stopped?

Hi! Yes, the new description looks correct 👍
Thanks

[kylos101]

Removed from team workspace groundwork, this should be fixed by IDE team and this PR, @svenefftinge @akosyakov @loujaybee for awareness. For example, the expectation is that docker-compose down will be run as part of shutdown, before content backup.

[akosyakov]

@kylos101 agree that docker-compose down should be run, but users still can forget to do it when a workspace should restart regardless from backup, why does not it happen?

[shayani]

I got 2 more workspaces (on same repository) that can't start:

• https://gitpod.io/start/#eventaservo-eventaservo-59o3sm76wlw
• https://gitpod.io/start/#eventaservo-eventaservo-25927144cf9

But the wrost thing is that I had unpushed changes on it that is lost now :(

[shayani]

Also, I use Gitpod for 3 repositories, but I'm only having this error in one of them. In that repository I use docker-compose to spin-up some containers. Could that be the reason the workspace sometime fails?