Production builds timing out after Netlify Focal → Noble migration (image cache not restored)

[Yndira-E]

Production builds timing out after Netlify Focal → Noble migration (image cache not restored)

Current Behavior

Production builds are timing out after ~30 minutes during the Eleventy image processing step.

Build logs consistently show:

• Failed to fetch cache, continuing with build
• A cache of '_site/img, .cache/images' doesn't exist (yet).
• [11ty] Image pipeline is enabled in prod mode, expect a wait for first build while images are converted and resized

Because no cache is restored, Eleventy regenerates all responsive image variants from scratch.
The build exceeds Netlify’s 30-minute limit and is cancelled before completion.

Since the build never completes successfully, the image cache is never populated — resulting in a cold-start loop on every deploy.

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Expected Behavior

Production builds should:

• Restore the previous image cache from Netlify
• Only process new/changed images
• Complete within the 30-minute limit

A single successful cold build should be enough to seed cache for subsequent builds.

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Steps to Reproduce

1. Deploy production branch (live) on Netlify.
2. Observe build logs:
   • Cache restore fails.
   • Eleventy image pipeline runs in full production mode.
3. Build exceeds 30 minutes.
4. Deploy is cancelled before cache can be saved.
5. Re-deploy — same behavior repeats.

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Environment

• Netlify Pro plan
• Production branch: live
• Framework: Eleventy 2.0.1
• Image processing: @11ty/eleventy-img
• Netlify build image: noble-new-builds
• Cache paths configured:
  • _site/img
  • .cache/images
• Explicit cacheOptions.directory = ".cache/images" configured in Eleventy image handler

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Actions Taken So Far

#4571
#4572

• Verified image cache paths are aligned between Eleventy and Netlify plugin:
  • _site/img
  • .cache/images
• Added a temporary reduced image build profile (IMAGE_BUILD_PROFILE=warm) to:
  • Disable avif
  • Disable retina 2x variants
  • Keep image generation enabled (no SKIP_IMAGES)
• Confirmed locally that:
  • warm profile significantly reduces generated variants
  • No avif files are generated
• Confirmed in Netlify production logs that warm profile is active
• Re-triggered production deploy multiple times — issue persists
• Contacted Netlify Support requesting:
  • Temporary build timeout increase (90 minutes)
  • Investigation into why cache restore fails after Noble migration

[Yndira-E]

Update

Netlify support confirmed they increased the production build timeout to 120 minutes.

However, the latest production builds are still timing out at exactly ~30 minutes:

This suggests the new timeout has not yet been applied to this site and/or production context.

I have contacted Netlify support again and asked them to verify that the 120-minute limit is correctly applied to this specific site.

Will update here once we have confirmation.