OpenStack Request-ID Log Trace Prompt

You are a senior OpenStack operator with deep experience tracing a single user request as it fans out across nova-api, conductor, scheduler, compute, neutron-server, OVS/OVN agents, cinder-api, cinder-volume, glance, keystone, and placement.

I will provide:
- The user-facing symptom (boot failed, attach hung, etc.)
- The initial `X-Openstack-Request-Id` (req-XXXXXXXX) from the failing API call
- Raw log excerpts from multiple services — possibly out of order, possibly partial
- The OpenStack release

Your job:

1. **Build a timeline** of the request as it crosses service boundaries. Each row: `timestamp | service | host | event | child request-id (if any)`.
2. **Track the request-id chain**: when service A calls service B, the *global* request-id is propagated as `X-Openstack-Request-Id` and B logs a new *local* request-id linked to A's. Reconstruct that chain.
3. **Identify the first error or anomaly** in the timeline (not the user-visible failure, which is downstream).
4. **Flag missing hops**: if you expect e.g. nova-conductor → nova-scheduler but the scheduler log doesn't show the request, that gap is the bug.
5. **Suggest the next log to fetch** if the trace is incomplete (be exact: which host, which service, which log file, what time window).
6. **Conclude** with the root-cause hypothesis grounded in the timeline.

Format the timeline as a markdown table. Use UTC timestamps consistently. If timezones differ across logs, normalize and note assumptions.

---

OpenStack release: [yoga / zed / antelope / bobcat / caracal / dalmatian / epoxy]
Symptom: [DESCRIBE]
Initial request-id: [req-XXXXXXXX]
Affected resource (server/volume/network UUID): [UUID]

Log excerpts (label each block with `service @ host`):

```
# nova-api @ ctrl-01
[PASTE]
```

```
# nova-conductor @ ctrl-01
[PASTE]
```

```
# nova-scheduler @ ctrl-02
[PASTE]
```

```
# nova-compute @ compute-17
[PASTE]
```

```
# neutron-server @ ctrl-01
[PASTE]
```

```
# cinder-volume @ storage-03 (if applicable)
[PASTE]
```

```
# other services / agents
[PASTE]
```

Why this prompt works

OpenStack is a microservices system that’s older than the term “microservice.” A single openstack server create call touches Keystone (auth), Nova-api, Nova-conductor, Nova-scheduler, Placement, Glance, Neutron, possibly Cinder, then libvirt on the compute. The user sees ERROR — but the actual error happened five hops in.

Without forcing the model to build a timeline, it tends to fixate on the most recent log line and miss the upstream cause. This prompt produces a row-by-row trace that surfaces the first anomaly.

How to use it

1. Find the request-id from the failing API response header: X-Openstack-Request-Id: req-XXXXXXXX.
2. On each candidate host, narrow logs to a tight time window:

   sudo journalctl --since "2026-05-21 14:30" --until "2026-05-21 14:35" -u nova-api -u nova-conductor

3. Then grep the request-id within that window. Don’t grep the whole log — too much noise.
4. Paste each service’s relevant lines under a clearly-labeled block.

Useful one-liner: pull a request across all services

# On each controller / compute / storage host:
sudo grep -rh "req-XXXXXXXX" /var/log/{nova,neutron,cinder,keystone,glance,placement}/ 2>/dev/null | \
  sort -k1,2

# Or via journalctl (systemd-journal):
sudo journalctl --since "1 hour ago" | grep "req-XXXXXXXX"

What “good propagation” looks like

A request-id chain typically looks like:

req-AAAA  user → nova-api
  req-AAAA  nova-api → keystone (auth)
  req-AAAA  nova-api → nova-conductor
    req-AAAA  nova-conductor → nova-scheduler
    req-BBBB  nova-conductor → glance (image lookup, new global req-id sometimes)
    req-AAAA  nova-conductor → neutron-server (port allocate)
    req-AAAA  nova-conductor → cinder-api (volume attach)
  req-AAAA  nova-scheduler → placement (resource claim)
req-AAAA → nova-compute (build task)
  req-AAAA  nova-compute → libvirt (define + start)
  req-AAAA  nova-compute → neutron-l2-agent (port wire-up)

If your trace shows req-AAAA reaching nova-scheduler but nothing logged in placement, the call never completed there — that’s the bug.

Common findings this catches

• Request times out at the scheduler because [scheduler] max_attempts exhausted but the nova-api log just shows NoValidHost. Trace reveals the retry storm.
• Neutron port allocation succeeds but the compute log shows the port wiring never happened — agent on that compute is down.
• Cinder attach returns 200 OK to nova-conductor but os-brick on compute fails minutes later. Two separate request IDs, one timeline.
• Auth failures invisible upstream: Keystone validates, but a downstream service’s local policy.yaml rejects. The Keystone log looks clean.
• Cross-cell calls (in cellv2 deployments) routed wrong — request-id appears in cell0 logs when it should be in cell1.

When use_global_request_id matters

Some releases need explicit config in [DEFAULT]:

[DEFAULT]
use_global_request_id = true

to ensure the same request-id propagates rather than each service generating its own. If your trace shows brand-new request-ids appearing at each hop with no link, check this setting in your release.

When to escalate

If the timeline shows the request leaving service A but never arriving at service B, and both services’ clocks are NTP-synced, this is almost always message bus (RabbitMQ) — a queue is stuck, a binding is wrong, or the consumer is in a slow GC cycle. Time to look at the broker, not the apps.