Pyrax error: compute_flavor:create:image_backed

Fabien,

The problem appears to stem from the fact that you are trying to create a compute flavor which does not come with a boot disk.  That error means that you have provided an image to use when building the server, but that the server does not have a boot disk.

You will need to specify the block_device_mapping_v2 charge to the create method when building the server, so that it can also create a block storage device at create time to use as it's boot device.  Here is an example that should fit into your use case:

block_device_mapping_v2 = [{
   'boot_index': '0',
   'delete_on_termination': True,
   'destination_type': 'volume',
   'uuid': pyrax.utils.get_id(debian_image),
   'source_type': 'image',
   'volume_size': '75',
}]
image = None
server = compute.servers.create('test', image, flv, nics=nics, block_device_mapping_v2=block_device_mapping_v2)

You can find more information about booting from volume at http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/boot-a-server-from-a-cloud-block-storage-volume

- Matt

EDIT: I just noticed that I originally made block_device_mapping_v2 a dict.  It should be a list of dicts.

HI Matt,

I've having the same problem.
Supplying a block_device_mapping_v2 doesn't appear to work.
This is basically what I have:

block_device_map = [{
    'boot_index': '0',
    'source_type': 'image',
    'destination_type': 'volume',
    'delete_on_termination': True,
    'uuid': pyrax.util.get_id(server.image_id),
    'volume_size': server.boot_device['size'],
    'device_name': 'vda'
}]
server.image_id = None

rs.servers.create(server.name, server.image_id, server.flavor_id, meta=server.meta_data, files=server.files, nics=server.networks, block_device_mapping_v2=block_device_map)

When this code runs, I always get the following error:
    Invalid imageRef provided. (HTTP 400)
I know the image id is good because I can build a volume using that same image id without issues (and I can't use that newly made volume as the boot device either). If I leave the image_id alone and don't clear it, then I'll get the error the OP posted. Simply adding the device map doesn't appear to work.

I've poured over the docs and must be missing something critical, any ideas?

These are the docs I've looked at:

https://developer.rackspace.com/docs/cloud-block-storage/v1/developer-guide/#create-volume
https://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/boot-a-server-from-a-cloud-block-storage-volume
https://developer.rackspace.com/docs/cloud-servers/v2/developer-guide/#document-extensions/ext-boot-from-volume

Ok, I figured out my problem.

This is a case of a typo in a key that causes no exceptions to be thrown, it just silently swallows it.
I misspelled block_device_mapping_v2 as block_device_mappping_v2, no matter how many times I read that line, I didn't see the typo (brain autocorrect).
Since the key was spelled wrong, it wasn't mapped into the body of the create request. Always leaving out the device mapping always causes the 400 "Invald imageRef" to be returned.

Posted in case someone else has this problem and doesn't see it.