# Allow manually retrying a job with fast fail **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [January 9, 2025, 1:06am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163 "2025-01-09T01:06:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![noahtallen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@noahtallen](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/noahtallen)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 1:06am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/1 "2025-01-09T01:06:13Z")
We have a very large generated pipeline, most of which is set up to fast fail using `cancel_on_build_failing`. If you attempt to manually retry the job which failed the build, it immediately gets cancelled due to the fast fail settings. Is it possible to bypass that so you can manually retry a job even when fast fail is on? Ultimately, I want to, say, take a video of a failing test if you manually retry that specific job. (To avoid the overhead normally, but make it super easy to access otherwise.) But I still want fast fail enabled normally. ---
**Author:** ![lizette](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/lizette/32/1161_2.png) [@lizette](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/lizette)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/2 "2025-01-09T02:21:10Z")
Hi @noahtallen, there is a `Retry failed jobs` button (besides rebuild) that triggers the failed jobs for you. This should help to rerun those failed jobs without them being cancelled immediately. ---
**Author:** ![noahtallen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@noahtallen](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/noahtallen)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 5:44pm UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/3 "2025-01-09T17:44:17Z")
Unfortunately, that’s where I’m experiencing the problem! Let’s say there are 10 jobs, and one of them fails. This causes all other jobs to get cancelled via fast failure. When I then go to `Retry failed jobs` (or retry that individual job), that new retry is instantly cancelled. I’m guessing this is due to the `cancel_on_build_failing` flag, since that setting applies to every job in the build, and I guess the job settings don’t change when you retry it. I’m wondering if there’s a work around so that the job can normally be cancelled by fast failure, but still allow manually retries. ---
**Author:** ![amna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@amna](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/amna)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2025, 12:45am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/4 "2025-01-10T00:45:52Z")
Hi @noahtallen and thank you for raising this! 👋 The `cancel_on_build_failing` flag just doesn’t let failed jobs be retried—it cancels everything immediately, even on retries. Unfortunately, it looks like there’s no real workaround for this. If you want manual retries to work, you’d probably have to disable fast-fail entirely. ---
**Author:** ![noahtallen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@noahtallen](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/noahtallen)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2025, 3:06am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/5 "2025-01-10T03:06:54Z")
That’s unfortunate! Can I change this to a feature request? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![stephanie.atte](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/stephanie.atte/32/1357_2.png) [@stephanie.atte](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/stephanie.atte)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2025, 12:15am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/6 "2025-01-11T00:15:30Z")
Hey @noahtallen for sure we can raise a feedback for this issue. To understand a little better, we would like to clarify a few things. As this helps to dissect the issue and how it affects you currently - Can you describe the problem you’re trying to solve? - How is this issue impacting your workflow or team’s productivity? - How are you currently working around this issue? Is there anything that partially meets your needs? ---
**Author:** ![lizette](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/lizette/32/1161_2.png) [@lizette](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/lizette)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2025, 4:43am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/7 "2025-01-14T04:43:00Z")
Hi @noahtallen , just an update on this. We have raised a feedback to the product folks about this issue and informed them that the attribute can be limiting when you only want to retry one job from the build. ---
**Author:** ![noahtallen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@noahtallen](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/noahtallen)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2025, 9:05pm UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/8 "2025-01-15T21:05:37Z")
Thank you! Fast fail and job retry are both useful features. Fast failure helps avoid running extra workflows when they aren’t strictly needed, and job retry lets you see if a specific job might pass on a re-run due to a flaky test. Currently, you can’t get both of these benefits together. The specific workflow I’ve been looking at is a little different: I want to allow devs to retry an individual job to get some extra functionality. For example, let’s say I have a massive CI pipeline with multiple jobs which each run a few e2e tests. When a test fails, it could be useful to auto-cancel all the other jobs to help decrease CI resource utilization. At the same time, I want a developer to be able to click “retry job,” which then enables video recording for the e2e test framework. (Video recording in, e.g. Cypress, has performance overhead which isn’t needed almost all of the time… unless a test fails _and_ a developer needs to investigate it!) This manually retry job → enable video recording in that specific job is totally possible, but that new job gets cancelled instantly if fast failure is enabled. Doing this via “retry job” instead of “retry build” is useful, because the entire build has a large number of pipeline steps – running the individual job (the smallest unit of that build as possible) is much more efficient, since a new build isn’t needed to enable video recording. IMO, fast failure shouldn’t impact manually retried jobs in CI – the main point of fast failure is to cancel automatically started jobs which don’t necessarily need to continue. But when a developer manually retries a job, that’s a strong signal they don’t want it to be auto-cancelled. ---
**Author:** ![lizette](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/lizette/32/1161_2.png) [@lizette](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/lizette)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2025, 10:08pm UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/allow-manually-retrying-a-job-with-fast-fail/4163/9 "2025-01-15T22:08:25Z")
Hi @noahtallen , Thanks for this added context on the feedback. We will pass it on to our product team. Cheers!