502 Bad Gateway errors when fetching merge commits on main branch #2577
Description
Environment details
- OS: Rocky Linux 8.10 (self-hosted GitHub Actions runner)
- Node.js version: [default used by googleapis/release-please-action@v4]
- npm version: [default used by googleapis/release-please-action@v4]
release-pleaseversion: 16.18.0- Action: googleapis/release-please-action@v4
Problem
We are seeing intermittent failures in our CI when release-please attempts to fetch merge commits on the main branch.
The error occurs before a release PR is opened, and happens even after changing to a different self-hosted runner.
Error observed: 502 Bad Gateway (nginx)
❯ Fetching merge commits on branch main with cursor: undefined
Full Error Log:
Running release-please version: 16.18.0
❯ Fetching .github/releases/release-please-config.json from branch main
❯ Fetching .github/releases/.release-please-manifest.json from branch main
✔ Building releases
✔ Building strategies by path
❯ .: simple
❯ Fetching .github/releases/release-please-config.json from branch main
❯ Fetching .github/releases/.release-please-manifest.json from branch main
✔ Building pull requests
✔ Building strategies by path
❯ .: simple
✔ Collecting release commit SHAs
❯ release search depth: 2
❯ Fetching releases with cursor undefined
❯ Found release for path ., rel-v1.64.0-main
❯ release for path: ., version: 1.64.0-main, sha: 3e8b71f7b6ea1c02674e294f3d38c5412bf1c201
✔ Collecting commits since all latest releases
❯ commit search depth: 2
❯ Set(1) { '3e8b71f7b6ea1c02674e294f3d38c5412bf1c201' }
❯ Fetching merge commits on branch main with cursor: undefined
✔ received 502 error, 5 attempts remaining
✔ received 502 error, 4 attempts remaining
✔ received 502 error, 3 attempts remaining
✔ received 502 error, 2 attempts remaining
✔ received 502 error, 1 attempts remaining
⚠ ran out of retries and response is required
Error: release-please failed: <html>
<head><title>502 Bad Gateway</title></head>
<body>
<center><h1>502 Bad Gateway</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center>
</body>
</html>
Timeline of first occurrence
- First observed: 13 August 2025 at 19:22 IST
- For the next ~2 hours, we repeatedly tried re-running the workflow and switching to a different self-hosted runner — but the same error persisted.
- Around 3 hours later, the same workflow ran successfully without any changes.
- Since then, the issue appears intermittently — sometimes failing with one of the two errors above, and other times succeeding after a re-run.
Debugging so far
- Verified that our lab network was stable during failures — internet connectivity was available from the self-hosted runner.
- Issue occurs regardless of runner host.
- Happens intermittently — retries sometimes succeed, other times all retries fail.
Steps to reproduce
- Run
googleapis/release-please-action@v4in a GitHub Actions workflow on a repository with an existing.github/releases/release-please-config.jsonand.release-please-manifest.json. - Use a self-hosted runner (also observed after switching runners to different self hosted runners).
- Workflow fails during Fetching merge commits on branch main with cursor: undefined step with error 502
Questions
- What is the underlying reason for this intermittent failure when fetching merge commits?
- How can we fix or work around it efficiently so the action runs reliably?
If you need any additional logs or details to debug this, please let me know.