CVO recently introduced a new precondition RecommendedUpdate[1]. While we request an upgrade to a version which is not an available update, the precondition got UnknownUpdate and blocks the upgrade.

# oc get clusterversion/version -ojson | jq -r '.status.availableUpdates'null

# oc get clusterversion/version -ojson | jq -r '.status.conditions[]|select(.type == "ReleaseAccepted")'
{
  "lastTransitionTime": "2022-10-20T08:16:59Z",
  "message": "Preconditions failed for payload loaded version=\"4.12.0-0.nightly-multi-2022-10-18-153953\" image=\"quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release-nightly@sha256:71c1912990db7933bcda1d6914228e8b9b0d36ddba265164ee33a1bca06fe695\": Precondition \"ClusterVersionRecommendedUpdate\" failed because of \"UnknownUpdate\": RetrievedUpdates=False (VersionNotFound), so the recommended status of updating from 4.12.0-0.nightly-multi-2022-10-18-091108 to 4.12.0-0.nightly-multi-2022-10-18-153953 is unknown.",
  "reason": "PreconditionChecks",
  "status": "False",
  "type": "ReleaseAccepted"
}


[1]https://github.com/openshift/cluster-version-operator/pull/841/

4.12.0-0.nightly-multi-2022-10-18-091108

Always

1. Install a 4.12 cluster
2. Upgrade to a version which is not in the available update
# oc adm upgrade --allow-explicit-upgrade --to-image=quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release-nightly@sha256:71c1912990db7933bcda1d6914228e8b9b0d36ddba265164ee33a1bca06fe695warning: The requested upgrade image is not one of the available updates.You have used --allow-explicit-upgrade for the update to proceed anywayRequesting update to release image quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release-nightly@sha256:71c1912990db7933bcda1d6914228e8b9b0d36ddba265164ee33a1bca06fe695 

CVO precondition check fails and blocks upgrade

Upgrade proceeds