[CASSANDRA-11537] Give clear error when certain nodetool commands are issued before server is ready

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Low
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 5.0-alpha1, 5.0
• Component/s: Legacy/Observability, Local/Startup and Shutdown
• Labels: lhf
• Change Category: Operability
• Complexity: Low Hanging Fruit

Source Control Link

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/commit/035705f49464a4854482e1f1280a7af45f7f0203

Test and Documentation Plan

Unit tests

• Assignee: William Nguyen
• Reporter: Edward Capriolo

Authors

William Nguyen

Reviewers

Brandon Williams, Paulo Motta

• Created: 08/Apr/16 16:04
• Updated: 12/Sep/23 13:02
• Resolved: 23/Jan/23 22:20

Description

As an ops person upgrading and servicing Cassandra servers, I require a more clear message when I issue a nodetool command that the server is not ready for it so that I am not confused.

Technical description:
If you deploy a new binary, restart, and issue nodetool scrub/compact/updatess etc you get unfriendly assertion. An exception would be easier to understand. Also if a user has turned assertions off it is unclear what might happen.

EC1: Throw exception to make it clear server is still in start up process. 
:~# nodetool upgradesstables
error: null
-- StackTrace --
java.lang.AssertionError
    at org.apache.cassandra.db.Keyspace.open(Keyspace.java:97)
    at org.apache.cassandra.service.StorageService.getValidKeyspace(StorageService.java:2573)
    at org.apache.cassandra.service.StorageService.getValidColumnFamilies(StorageService.java:2661)
    at org.apache.cassandra.service.StorageService.upgradeSSTables(StorageService.java:2421)

EC1:
Patch against 2.1 (branch)

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/compare/trunk...edwardcapriolo:exception-on-startup?expand=1