I have a pipeline that start with by getting a file in a GCS bucket and do several tasks on it.
Sometime, after big update I have to rerun every file one by one. That's what I did and everything goes well for 190 files (for around 290 in total) but suddenly on task fail, without log. This task should have launch a K8s pod but here nothing. No logs in airflow, no pod launched in K8s. If I try to clear the task but still fail the same way.
The task fail as soon as lunched. I restarted the instance, I have space on the disk... I have no idea what to do.
I work in a team that uses one of the big cloud providers to host the stuff that we do. Every morning before I come into work I have a scheduled job that stands up a development environment within that cloud and every evening I have a scheduled job that tears it all down again. That development enviornment includes an instance of Apache Airflow and another thing that job does is run an Airflow DAG which contains one task.
I have an intermittent problem with that DAG, the DAG will run but occasionally the task instance for that one task fails to get scheduled. It has happened this morning, here are the task instance details:
In this case:
the scheduler is running and is definitely not under heavy load (nothing else is running)
as far as I'm aware it has not already ran
I have an easy way of fixing this, I go and restart the airflow scheduler (which, because we have setup airflow to run as a linux service, involves ssh'ing onto the VM on which we have airflow installed and issuing systemctl restart airflow-scheduler). Immediately after doing this the task instance will begin to execute.
As I said this problem is intermittent i.e. I cannot determine the root cause, some mornings everything works fine, sometimes it gets stuck like this.This morning it is stuck.
I have read Why isn't my task getting scheduled? and one thing there that piqued my attention was:
Is your start_date set properly? The Airflow scheduler triggers the task soon after the start_date + schedule_interval is passed.
I have just had a look at the task and its start_date is None:
The schedule_interval of the DAG is None because we don't schedule this DAG, we manually trigger it (which is what my morning job does):
So, the task doesn't have a start_date and the schedule_interval of the DAG is None which sort of explains why its not running, but it doesn't explain why some days it does run and some days it does not.
I have just gone and restarted the scheduler service (as explained above) and the task is now running. Taking a look at the details of the task instance again, it now gained a start_date:
I'm not clear on why restarting the scheduler causes the task instance to start running. Can anyone suggest what might be the cause? I admit I don't have a great understanding of start_date.
UPDATE 2020-04-21: A colleague brought to my attention a bug that sounds similar (though may not be the same): AIRFLOW-1641 - Task gets stuck in queued state. That issue was fixed in airflow 1.9, we are currently using airflow 1.8.1 but will soon be upgrading to airflow 1.10.
You are correct, restarting the scheduler shouldn't change the start date of the dag. I'm wondering if you have a small logic bug in your job that initially create the airflow instance and dag. It sounds like everything would work fine if your dag had a start date to begin with. Them you wouldn't need to dive into why restarting the scheduler gets it to work.
I have an airflow instance that had been running with no problem for 2 months until Sunday. There was a blackout in a system on which my airflow tasks depend and some tasks where queued for 2 days. After that we decided it was better to mark all the tasks for that day as failed and just lose that data.
Nevertheless, now all the new tasks get trigger at the proper time but they are never being set to any state (neither queued nor running). I check the logs and I see this output:
Dependencies Blocking Task From Getting Scheduled
All dependencies are met but the task instance is not running. In most cases this just means that the task will probably be scheduled soon unless:
The scheduler is down or under heavy load
The following configuration values may be limiting the number of queueable processes: parallelism, dag_concurrency, max_active_dag_runs_per_dag, non_pooled_task_slot_count
This task instance already ran and had its state changed manually (e.g. cleared in the UI)
I get the impression the 3rd topic is the reason why it is not working.
The scheduler and the webserver were working, however I restarted the scheduler and still I am having the same outcome. I also deleted the data in mysql database for one job and it is still not running.
I also saw a couple of post that said it is not running because the depens_on_past was set to true and if the previous runs failed, the next one will never be executed. I also checked it and it is not my case.
Any input would be really apreciated.
Any ideas? Thanks
While debugging a similar issue i found this setting: AIRFLOW__SCHEDULER__MAX_DAGRUNS_PER_LOOP_TO_SCHEDULE (or http://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/2.0.1/configurations-ref.html#max-dagruns-per-loop-to-schedule), checking the airflow code it seems that the scheduler queries for dagruns to examine (consider to run ti's for), this query is limited to that number of rows (or 20 by default). So if you have >20 dagruns that are in some way blocked (in our case because ti's were on up-for-retry), then it won't consider other dagruns even though these could run fine.
I have a task that's scheduled to run hourly, however it's not being triggered. When I look at theTask Instance Details it says:
All dependencies are met but the task instance is not running. In most cases this just means that the task will probably be scheduled soon unless:
- The scheduler is down or under heavy load
- The following configuration values may be limiting the number of queueable processes: parallelism, dag_concurrency, max_active_dag_runs_per_dag, non_pooled_task_slot_count
- This task instance already ran and had its state changed manually (e.g. cleared in the UI)
If this task instance does not start soon please contact your Airflow administrator for assistance.
If I clear the task in the UI I am able to execute it through terminal but it does not run when scheduled.
Why do I have to manually clear it after every run?
Airflow is randomly not running queued tasks some tasks dont even get queued status. I keep seeing below in the scheduler logs
[2018-02-28 02:24:58,780] {jobs.py:1077} INFO - No tasks to consider for execution.
I do see tasks in database that either have no status or queued status but they never get started.
The airflow setup is running https://github.com/puckel/docker-airflow on ECS with Redis. There are 4 scheduler threads and 4 Celery worker tasks. For the tasks that are not running are showing in queued state (grey icon) when hovering over the task icon operator is null and task details says:
All dependencies are met but the task instance is not running. In most cases this just means that the task will probably be scheduled soon unless:- The scheduler is down or under heavy load
Metrics on scheduler do not show heavy load. The dag is very simple with 2 independent tasks only dependent on last run. There are also tasks in the same dag that are stuck with no status (white icon).
Interesting thing to notice is when I restart the scheduler tasks change to running state.
Airflow can be a bit tricky to setup.
Do you have the airflow scheduler running?
Do you have the airflow webserver running?
Have you checked that all DAGs you want to run are set to On in the web ui?
Do all the DAGs you want to run have a start date which is in the past?
Do all the DAGs you want to run have a proper schedule which is shown in the web ui?
If nothing else works, you can use the web ui to click on the dag, then on Graph View. Now select the first task and click on Task Instance. In the paragraph Task Instance Details you will see why a DAG is waiting or not running.
I've had for instance a DAG which was wrongly set to depends_on_past: True which forbid the current instance to start correctly.
Also a great resource directly in the docs, which has a few more hints: Why isn't my task getting scheduled?.
I'm running a fork of the puckel/docker-airflow repo as well, mostly on Airflow 1.8 for about a year with 10M+ task instances. I think the issue persists in 1.9, but I'm not positive.
For whatever reason, there seems to be a long-standing issue with the Airflow scheduler where performance degrades over time. I've reviewed the scheduler code, but I'm still unclear on what exactly happens differently on a fresh start to kick it back into scheduling normally. One major difference is that scheduled and queued task states are rebuilt.
Scheduler Basics in the Airflow wiki provides a concise reference on how the scheduler works and its various states.
Most people solve the scheduler diminishing throughput problem by restarting the scheduler regularly. I've found success at a 1-hour interval personally, but have seen as frequently as every 5-10 minutes used too. Your task volume, task duration, and parallelism settings are worth considering when experimenting with a restart interval.
For more info see:
Airflow: Tips, Tricks, and Pitfalls (section "The scheduler should be restarted frequently")
Bug 1286825 - Airflow scheduler stopped working silently
Airflow at WePay (section "Restart everything when deploying DAG changes.")
This used to be addressed by restarting every X runs using the SCHEDULER_RUNS config setting, although that setting was recently removed from the default systemd scripts.
You might also consider posting to the Airflow dev mailing list. I know this has been discussed there a few times and one of the core contributors may be able to provide additional context.
Related Questions
Airflow tasks get stuck at "queued" status and never gets running (especially see Bolke's answer here)
Jobs not executing via Airflow that runs celery with RabbitMQ
Make sure you don't have datetime.now() as your start_date
It's intuitive to think that if you tell your DAG to start "now" that it'll execute "now." BUT, that doesn't take into account how Airflow itself actually reads datetime.now().
For a DAG to be executed, the start_date must be a time in the past, otherwise Airflow will assume that it's not yet ready to execute. When Airflow evaluates your DAG file, it interprets datetime.now() as the current timestamp (i.e. NOT a time in the past) and decides that it's not ready to run. Since this will happen every time Airflow heartbeats (evaluates your DAG) every 5-10 seconds, it'll never run.
To properly trigger your DAG to run, make sure to insert a fixed time in the past (e.g. datetime(2019,1,1)) and set catchup=False (unless you're looking to run a backfill).
By design, an Airflow DAG will execute at the completion of its schedule_interval
That means one schedule_interval AFTER the start date. An hourly DAG, for example, will execute its 2pm run when the clock strikes 3pm. The reasoning here is that Airflow can't ensure that all data corresponding to the 2pm interval is present until the end of that hourly interval.
This is a peculiar aspect to Airflow, but an important one to remember - especially if you're using default variables and macros.
Time in Airflow is in UTC by default
This shouldn't come as a surprise given that the rest of your databases and APIs most likely also adhere to this format, but it's worth clarifying.
Full article and source here
I also had a similar issue, but it is mostly related to SubDagOperator with more than 3000 task instances in total (30 tasks * 44 subdag tasks).
What I found out is that airflow scheduler mainly responsible for putting your scheduled tasks in to "Queued Slots" (pool), while airflow celery workers is the one who pick up your queued task and put it into the "Used Slots" (pool) and run it.
Based on your description, your scheduler should work fine. I suggest you check your "celery workers" log to see whether there is any error, or restart it to see whether it helps or not. I experienced some issues that celery workers normally go on strike for a few minutes then start working again (especially on SubDagOperator)
One of the very silly reasons could be that the DAG is "paused" which is the default state for the first time. I lost around 2 hrs fighting it. If you are using Airflow Web interface, then this shows up as a toggle next to your DAG in the list
I am facing the issue today and found that bullet point 4 from tobi6 answer below worked out and resolved the issue
*'Do all the DAGs you want to run have a start date which is in the past?'*
I am using airflow version v1.10.3
My problem was one step further, in addition to my tasks being queued, I couldn't see any of my celery workers on the Flower UI. The solution was that, since I was running my celery worker as root I had to make changes in my ~/.bashrc file.
The following steps made it work:
Add export C_FORCE_ROOT=true to your ~/.bashrc file
source ~/.bashrc
Run worker : nohup airflow worker $* >> ~/airflow/logs/worker.logs &
Check your Flower UI at http://{HOST}:5555
I think it's worth mentioning that there's an open issue that can cause tasks to fail to run with no obvious reason: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AIRFLOW-5506
The problem seems to occur when using LocalScheduler connected to a PostgreSQL airflow db, and results in the scheduler logging a number of "Killing PID xxxx" lines. Check the scheduler logs after the DAGs have been stalled without starting any new tasks for a while.
You can try to stop the webserver and the scheduler:
ps -ef | grep airflow #show the process id
kill 1234 #kill the webserver
kill 5678 #kill the scheduler
Remove the files from the airflow folder if they exist (they will be created again):
airflow-scheduler.err
airflow-scheduler.pid
airflow-webserver.err
airflow-webserver.pid
Start the webserver and the scheduler again.
airflow webserver -D
airflow scheduler -D
-D will make the services run in the background.
I had a similar issue of a triggered DAG "running" indefinitely because its first task stuck in "queued" state.
I realized this was because of a "ghost" DAG that actually changed name. It seems that since the DAG has run in the past (had data in the postgresDG) and was referenced as child-DAG in other DAGs, the trigger of the parent DAGs referencing the old name would "resurrect" the old DAG name, but with the new code. Indeed the old DAG name and new DAG code did not match, thus producing an "infinite queued execution" bug.
Solution:
Delete the all the previous DAG runs of the previous DAG-runs with the old name
Restart everything (webserver, worker, executor,...) OR Delete relevant DAGs (with the "delete DAG" button in the UI).
The interpretation of the bug can vary but this fix worked in my case.
One more thing to check is whether "the concurrency parameter of your DAG reached?".
I'd experienced the same situation when some task was shown as NO STATUS.
It turned out that my File_Sensor tasks were run with timeout set up to 1 week, while DAG time out was only 5 hours. That leaded to the case when the Files were missing, many sensors tasked were running at the same time. Which results the concurrency overloaded!
The depending tasks couldn't be started before the sensor task succeed, when the dag timeout, they got NO STATUS.
My solution:
Carefully set tasks and DAG timeout
Increase dag_concurrency in airflow.cfg file in AIRFLOW_HOME folder.
Please refer to the docs.
https://airflow.apache.org/faq.html#why-isn-t-my-task-getting-scheduled
I believe this is an issue with celery version 4.2.1 and redis 3.0.1 as described here:
https://github.com/celery/celery/issues/3808
we resolved the issue by downgrading our redis version 2.10.6:
redis==2.10.6
In my case, tasks were not being launched because I had for all operators a pool configured and hadn't created it, hence, tasks were not even scheduled. An operator looks like:
foo = DummyOperator(
task_id='foo',
dag=dag,
pool='capser'
)
To create a pool go to Admin > Pools > Create and set slots, for example, 128, which runs successfully for me. You can also configure by using the CLI.
counter intuitive UI message!
I have spent days on this. So want to elaborate on my specific issue (s).
Each dag has a state. By default the state could be 'pause' or 'not pause'.
The first confusion arises from - what is the default state on startup? The UI message attached seems to indicate that the state is 'not pause' and on clicking the toggle, it pauses.
In reality, the default state is 'pause'. This state can be controlled by settings, environment variables, parameters and UI. I have detailed them below.
The second confusion arises because of the UI again. When we manually trigger a dag which is in the pause state. The UI shows the dag as running (green circle)! But the dag is actually in the 'pause' state. The tasks will not execute unless it is 'un-paused'.
If we read the task instance details. The message would be
Task is in the 'None' state which is not a valid state for execution. The task must be cleared in order to be run.
What is the 'None' state!? And clear which task?!
The actual problem is that the dag is in the pause state. On toggling the dag state the tasks would start to execute.
The pause state of the dag can be changed by
clicking the button on the UI.
set your particular dag to run, by adding the below parameter to your dag
DAG(dag_id='your-dag', is_paused_upon_creation=True)
setting the config variable in airflow.cfg file. (caution: this will start all your dags including the example ones)
dags_are_paused_at_creation = FALSE
configuring an environment variable before starting up the scheduler/webserver.(caution: this will start all your dags including the example ones)
AIRFLOW__CORE__DAGS_ARE_PAUSED_AT_CREATION=False
Make sure that your task is assigned to the same queue, that your workers is listening to. This means that in your DAG file you have to set 'queue': 'queue_name' and in your worker configuration you have to set either default_queue = 'queue_name' in the airflow.cfg or AIRFLOW__OPERATORS__DEFAULT_QUEUE: 'queue_name' in the docker-compose.yaml (in case you're using Docker).