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Buildbarn action stuck in queue

Reviewed Jul 20, 20263 primary sources

The scheduler accepted the action but has not assigned it to an eligible worker. Queue growth is usually a matching or capacity signal, not an action-execution failure.

Common causes

  • No workers match the action platform properties
  • The matching size class has insufficient capacity
  • Workers are disconnected or unhealthy
  • A burst of long actions is consuming the available concurrency

What to check

  1. Compare action platform properties with registered worker platforms
  2. Inspect queue depth and oldest-operation age by platform queue
  3. Check worker registration, heartbeats, and active concurrency
  4. Separate sustained saturation from one malformed platform request

Primary sources

Use these references to confirm protocol and version-specific behavior.

Investigate with build-level evidence

Hermetiq correlates Bazel actions, cache behavior, Buildbarn infrastructure, and remote-execution timing so teams can move from a status code to the build and system behavior behind it.

Technical review: July 20, 2026 · Verify flags and behavior against the Bazel and Buildbarn versions deployed in your environment.