Sorry just realized that the description is a bit misleading. The problem is actually that hudson automatically triggers jobs as soon a workspace is empty (node disconnects).
i try to explain it a bit better with an example.
lets say we have a multi configuration job j1 with the labels c1, c2, c3.
lets assume all nodes with label c3 go down.
hudson will now automatically trigger j1.
why? The repository hasn't changed. There was no reason to trigger a build. Its even worse if you configure hudson to lock downstream jobs if upstream jobs are building - your whole cluster can lock up in this situation. The only fix is to cancel the build or boot a node with the c3 label.
So this issue could be addressed in at least two ways:
- add an option which tells hudson to not interpret disconnected nodes as empty workspaces and therefore trigger jobs
- add an option to only trigger multi config. jobs if all required nodes are reachable
But if some of required nodes are busy, I prefer to see job started before they become free.