Per the builds-api logic, when creating a new build (start action), the harbor project (repository) for the tool is created.
However, if there is network connectivity problems to the harbor API for whatever reason, the error reported to the user is weird.
In this particular example, harbor was not listening in the expected IP address, and caused this user-visible error.
user@laptop:~$ toolforge-build --debug start https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos/wm-lol DEBUG:toolforge_weld.config:Unable to find config file /etc/toolforge/builds.yaml, skipping DEBUG:toolforge_weld.config:Unable to find config file /etc/toolforge/common.yaml, skipping DEBUG:toolforge_weld.config:Unable to find config file /home/arturo/.toolforge.yaml, skipping DEBUG:toolforge_weld.config:Unable to find config file /home/arturo/.config/toolforge.yaml, skipping DEBUG:toolforge_weld.config:Updating config from /home/arturo/.toolforge-lima-kilo/chroot/etc/toolforge/toolforge.yaml DEBUG:urllib3.connectionpool:Starting new HTTPS connection (1): localhost:30003 An unknown error occured while trying to perform this operation. If the problem persists, please contact us or open a bug: see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T324822 Original error: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='localhost', port=30003): Read timed out. (read timeout=10)
On server side, the logs were:
[..]
{"level":"debug","msg":"Authenticating for /v1/build","time":"2023-09-08T10:41:46Z"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Got user tf-test, error %!s(\u003cnil\u003e)","time":"2023-09-08T10:41:46Z"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Got user tf-test, error %!s(\u003cnil\u003e)","time":"2023-09-08T10:41:46Z"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Attempting to create harbor project tool-tf-test","time":"2023-09-08T10:41:46Z"}
{"level":"error","msg":"Failed to create harbor project for tool tf-test: Post \"http://192.168.1.236/api/v2.0/projects\": dial tcp 192.168.1.236:80: i/o timeout","time":"2023-09-08T10:42:16Z"}
[..]My suggestion would be to catch this error (because it can happen in real toolforge) and report something more meaningful to the user,
something like timeout connecting to harbor, please contact a Toolforge admin [..]