Arch Linux

wub

Member

Registered: 2025-08-14

Posts: 17

incus - storage pool already exists, but also: storage pool not found

Hi all.
Trying and failing to get going with incus.
Having a lot of headaches.

I am following the arch wiki incus documentation, as well as the official incus docs.
Also have searched these forums and the incus forums.
Keep running into problems, this isn't the only one, but it seems to be the main one preventing me moving forward.

I've run:

    incus admin init

(or with sudo)
a number of times, as part of the troubleshooting (after doing it for the basic setup, and to initialize etc).

As I have already created a storage pool on the first time I ran this command, I get the following errors returned to me:

    Error: Failed to create storage pool "default": Storage pool directory "/var/lib/incus/storage-pools/default" already exists

However, when I actually try to pull down a container or image such as by

    sudo incus launch images:debian/13/amd64 deb13

I get

    Launching deb13

    Error: Failed instance creation: Failed creating instance record: Failed initializing instance: Failed loading storage pool: Storage pool not found

A bit of a conundrum. Can't create new pool because storage pool exists (I'm sure I can remove this pool and create a new one, but the point is it exists), but also can't launch a container / instance because storage pool can't be found!

I'm also having trouble with the web ui, but that could be because I can't get start get any container or VM instances working to begin with (due to "storage pool not found"), but could also be to do with my limited / non-understanding of sockets.
Again, I've tried the process as described in both Arch Wiki incus documentation and official, but no joy.
Anyway, that is a story for another post.

I seem to keep running into walls with this, despite following the documentation closely.
This seems a powerful tool, but is definitely not a straightforward tool.

My purpose for doing this is just basic NAT networked setup of containers/VMs for a basic "pentest practice lab" for dummies (I am the dummy). Trying to avoid virtualbox if I can, and also had some troubles with libvirt/qemu/virt-manager.
Incus looks to be the best thing, but getting started is a serious challenge at the moment.

Thanks for any help.

Last edited by wub (2025-08-16 14:29:21)