Description of problem: Like Bug 903930 describing that machines could get stuck in waiting forever if the recipe has not specified the power control, Beaker should nag authors to fill in the power control. From the conversation in IRC: 2015-08-25 13:40:54 ncoghlan speaking of the metrics page (on Freenode), there appears to be a stuck power controller somewhere 2015-08-25 13:41:18 ncoghlan several systems in "waiting" on the metrics page: https://docs.engineering.redhat.com/display/HTD/Beaker+Metrics 2015-08-25 13:46:08 dcallagh_trng ncoghlan: not stuck 2015-08-25 13:46:12 dcallagh_trng i checked 2015-08-25 13:46:15 dcallagh_trng the machines have no power control 2015-08-25 13:46:18 dcallagh_trng they are in the GSS lab 2015-08-25 13:46:28 ncoghlan dcallagh_trng: ah, cool 2015-08-25 13:46:31 dcallagh_trng seems to be a common problem, someone either forgets to fill in the power settings, or maybe it has none at all 2015-08-25 13:46:56 dcallagh_trng i think when i looked there was only 3 or 4 recipes stuck like that, hopefully they will eventually get them fixed up 2015-08-25 13:47:07 ncoghlan dcallagh_trng: does Beaker email or otherwise notify users when it's waiting for them to power cycle a machine? 2015-08-25 13:47:11 dcallagh_trng ncoghlan: no 2015-08-25 13:47:13 dcallagh_trng there is an old bug about that 2015-08-25 13:47:25 dcallagh_trng the fact that you can accidentally have no power control and your recipe will stay in Waiting forever 2015-08-25 13:47:37 dcallagh_trng we could add it to the nag mail probably 2015-08-25 13:47:49 ncoghlan heh, I was about to suggest something along those lines 2015-08-25 13:47:50 dcallagh_trng a new section for recipes waiting for you to press the reboot button
Created attachment 1066713 [details] IRC conversation Realising that reading the IRC conversation on the bug itself is probably really hard, I'm attaching this as a log.
We don't need to nag people to fill in the power settings, it's legitimate to have a system with no automatic power control. In that case if the user is running recipes on there, they have to walk over to it and manually hit the reboot button. The idea is just to add a new section to the beaker-usage-reminder e-mail, reminding the user about recipes which are waiting for them to manually reboot the system. In case they really did just forget to fill in the power settings that should give them a reminder to do so. Or else, if it really doesn't have automatic power control it will remind them to walk over and hit the button.
Given that beaker-usage-reminder already exists and works, adding this new section to it should be relatively straightforward.