Thanks for reaching out. Octopus shouldn’t be upgrading Offline drop targets because there’s no client on the other end to upgrade. I did a quick test just to make sure I’m not crazy (see attached screenshot)
Can you me a screenshot of where are you seeing this behavior? Also let me know which version of Octopus are you running.
In a nutshell Polling Tentacles work like this: The Octopus server adds a task to a queue and then it waits for the Polling Tentacle to pick it up. The server will fail the task only after a certain amount of time passed and the Tentacle didn’t pick it up. This is what’s happening here.
This behavior is quite different with Listening Tentacles, as in that case the Octopus Server sends the task order to the Tentacle and it immediately waits for an answer. If the answer doesn’t come back right away, then the Octopus server fails the task.
To answer your initial question Why Octopus.Server tries to upgrade offline Tentacles?. When we upgrade a Tentacle we first attempt a health check at it. and then we try to upgrade. The reason for this delay is because the Octopus server is waiting for the Polling Tentacle to pick up the task.