perhaps it is time to stop loading steps from logdog, but instead load them from new buildbucket APIs. Filed bug 850113

How did this user get to that page?  I thought we've gotten rid of all references to the chromium-swarm page (which loads a different codepath) but that doesn't seem to be the case.

This is important because if the user loaded https://ci.chromium.org/p/chromium/builders/luci.chromium.try/mac_chromium_rel_ng/63783 page instead, it would've loaded the correct build info from buildbucket, and merely said "couldn't load steps from logdog".

850113 won't help because the /task/<id> codepath doesn't touch buildbucket.

https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1087927/1 -> https://ci.chromium.org/p/chromium/builders/luci.chromium.try/mac_chromium_rel_ng/63783 -> "Source: Task ..."

... though the user in question didn't independently go to that page; I suggested it.

I believe that what you suggest in #2 didn't in fact happen; the user did load that page, and it was unable to load anything.

Ah I see, in that case I have no idea what's going on.  The behavior i'd expect to see is this:
https://screenshot.googleplex.com/HWGrFKwniAQ

What you're describing doesn't match up to what I'd expected.  A screenshot would've been helpful.

for swarming tasks that do have a proper buildbucket build id, should we redirect to the canonical build page? then we would avoid such problems and the build status would be accurate.