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[Centigrade]

Hello,

I have noticed that sometimes a dwarf will have "No Job" listed for months at a time despite there being jobs in the queue; for example, a repeating workshop job for which the dwarf has the relevant labour assigned, or a backlog of jobs in the Jobs or Manager screens. I do not know what causes it, but at least in the case of workshop jobs I have been able to resolve it by removing (not suspending! that does not work) all jobs from the workshop and then re-adding them. Manual reentry via the workshop window or automatic reentry through the manager screen or DFhack plugins all seem to resolve the issue, but the issue seems to be recurring and it does not usually announce itself; i.e., there is no cancellation spam.

Anyone else having this problem and know a way to prevent it?

edit: 9 February 2015

Several posters so far seem to have assumed things I did not fully explain. Below is a list of things I know.

• The jobs are not suspended.
• There is no job canceled announcement for the job.
• The problem presents on a brand new world and embark.
• There are no path finding issues or burrow restrictions.

Method of testing:

On a brand new embark, on a brand new world, I started with 7 proficient miners and a bunch of seeds, food and drink, then immediately dug for the magma sea. Upon reaching the magma sea, I built a magma glass furnace (Make Raw green glass/R), a regular glass furnace (Collect Sand/R), a clothier's workshop, a loom, a farmer's workshop, a kitchen, and a still; some farm plots for pig tails and plump helmets; and, assigned my starting dwarves each a single labour with all others disabled: grower, weaver, spinner, clothesmaker, glass maker, brewer, cook. The first two waves of migrants were assigned nothing but hauling except for one carpenter to make furniture; I made a sand bags stockpile (Furniture --> Types --> sand bags; Materials --> all; Qualities --> all) beside my glass furnace and magma glass furnace; I produced food, drink, and set up a basic textile industry to make thread --> cloth --> cloth bags; and, designated an area of sand near the surface for sand collection.

Until haulers arrived via migration, and I had a bunch of cloth bags stockpiled, I frequently received job cancellation announcements which resulted in suspended jobs in the workshops; this was caused by a lack of manpower for hauling. Once enough time passed for me to develop a self-sustaining glass industry and textile industry, I made a few changes to reproduce the problem. First, the magma furnace's workshop profile was set to only allow my intended glass maker to work in it; second, I added more regular glass furnaces, all set to Collect Sand/R, and increased the size of the stockpiles for sand bags. The result of these changes was that the amount of sand being brought to the stockpiles was high enough that my glassmaker could not go through them fast enough to deplete them, and so did not have reason to ever cancel or suspend his job. I even put his room in the area, as well as the dining and meeting hall, and stockpiles for drink and food.

In short, I removed through entirely vanilla means and without using exploits any reason for the dwarf to ever need to display "No Job".

It took a couple of months after everything was set up, but it eventually happened. It was incredibly easy to notice, since the magma glass furnace was by now the only building on its level and the conspicuous absence of a dwarf in the workshop prompted me to check the Units screen to see what he was doing: "No Job". A quick check of the workshop shows a non-suspended job for Make Raw green glass/R; a quick check of the stockpile shows dozens of sand bags; a quick check of the glassmaker's thoughts and preferences show that he has nothing but positive thoughts.

Removing and readding the glassmaking labour does not fix it.

Removing and readding the job Make Raw green glass/R fixes it.

And once more for good measure, since so far I am getting a bunch of Troubleshooting 101-style posts so far:
• The job is not suspended
• No other dwarf is doing the job or even has the labour assigned
• There are no path finding issues or burrow restrictions
• The workshop, the materials needed, and the job still exist less than ten tiles away from him
• There is no job cancellation announcement corresponding with the same month as when he stopped doing the job
• Removing and readding the job from the workshop temporarily fixes the problem

[Badger Storm]

See if there's anything blocking the path between the dwarf and their job, like a locked door or hatch.  I've also seen jobs auto-suspend themselves when they should be canceled, so check for a red S.  Alternatively, see if another dwarf is doing said job.

[Sanctume]

I'm not sure if it's a DF hack feature where the job on Repeat automatically goes on Suspend.  This produces 1 announcement. 

However, I notice that the manager does not add new jobs in the workshop's queue when something insides is suspended.

Also, when you manually c cancel a "suspended task on repeat" in a workshop with an R (repeat) while that task is S (suspended), the task it toggles back to R.  I have to remove s suspend, then remove r repeat, then c cancel.

[FukkenSaved]

When jobs are suspended there is a tendency for dwarves or workshops to avoid the task especially a specific one on repeat. I'm experiencing this myself with 3 stills and 3 brewers. Frankly, this seems like a job for auto workflow, I might make an autohotkey script for that like with auto labor.

[Centigrade]

See if there's anything blocking the path between the dwarf and their job, like a locked door or hatch.  I've also seen jobs auto-suspend themselves when they should be canceled, so check for a red S.  Alternatively, see if another dwarf is doing said job.

The jobs are not suspended, and the pathing is fine. The job is not being done by some other, non-existent dwarf with the same labour assigned. If any of those were the case, then merely removing the job from the workshop and adding it back would not fix it. The job goes months without ever actually being done, all the while sitting in the job queue.

I'm not sure if it's a DF hack feature where the job on Repeat automatically goes on Suspend.  This produces 1 announcement. 

However, I notice that the manager does not add new jobs in the workshop's queue when something insides is suspended.

Also, when you manually c cancel a "suspended task on repeat" in a workshop with an R (repeat) while that task is S (suspended), the task it toggles back to R.  I have to remove s suspend, then remove r repeat, then c cancel.

The jobs are not suspended. I know what the Suspended task icon looks like, and I know how to add and remove tasks. You know how I know for 100% sure that I am actually removing the job? Because it isn't there anymore!

When jobs are suspended there is a tendency for dwarves or workshops to avoid the task especially a specific one on repeat. I'm experiencing this myself with 3 stills and 3 brewers. Frankly, this seems like a job for auto workflow, I might make an autohotkey script for that like with auto labor.

The jobs are not suspended.

I have actually taken the time to troubleshoot the problem, identify and isolate it, and provide a workaround for anyone else who has the same issue. Three people in a row now seem to have just read the title and responded with a knee-jerk rather than actually read what was in the post. Helpful posts at this point are not basic Troubleshooting 101 posts, but some sort of inquiry into how to identify what is causing the bug and/or how to prevent it. I suppose it could just be my install of 40.24 with the PyLNP r3 somehow being wrong? I did not notice the issue in 40.23, for example.

[Loci]

There's a "cooldown" period after a dwarf is removed from a job, during which he won't accept the same job again. Removing the job and resubmitting it would probably be a successful workaround to the cooldown. Since I'm assuming *you* didn't remove the dwarf from the job, I wonder if the dwarf could somehow remove himself (food, drink, break, etc.). Perhaps Toady reused some of the worker-removal code for his job-priority modifications, resulting in unintended cooldowns.

It could also be tied to the tendency of dwarves to walk a few steps away from a workshop with "no job", then return to complete the next scheduled task. It seems that there's a timer involved, and if that timer got out of sync it might take a fair while for it to count all the way up and roll-over.

[Centigrade]

Is there any way to force that counter to rollover, such as with dfhack?

I can manually remove and reapply the jobs, but that quickly becomes time consuming especially when the jobs in question are meant to be "fire and forget" training jobs; i.e., turn this hundreds of spare copper into leggings, corkscrews, instruments, and chains, with the expressed purpose of training up all four metalworking things. Having to go back and manually reapply each of those jobs on each forge is a pain.

[Salmeuk]

And once more for good measure, since so far I am getting a bunch of Troubleshooting 101-style posts so far:

Three people in a row now seem to have just read the title and responded with a knee-jerk rather than actually read what was in the post. Helpful posts at this point are not basic Troubleshooting 101 posts, but some sort of inquiry into how to identify what is causing the bug and/or how to prevent it.

Consider trawling the bug report forums on your own, especially if you are looking only for a certain kind of answer.