RocketChat/Rocket.Chat · error · Meteor.Error

error-invalid-room

error-invalid-room

Error message

Invalid room

What it means

removeRoomOwner begins with Rooms.findOneById(rid, ...) and throws error-invalid-room when no document matches. As with the moderator variant, this precedes permission checks, so a nonexistent, deleted, or malformed room ID always produces it. rid must be the room's _id.

Solutions

1. Look the room up first (client Rooms collection or GET /api/v1/rooms.info?roomId=) and pass the returned _id
2. Reload the room context when the call fails so the UI drops dead references
3. Always pass _id, never name, for rid

Example fix

// before
await Meteor.callAsync('removeRoomOwner', roomName, userId);

// after
const room = Rooms.findOne({ name: roomName });
if (!room) throw new Error('room gone');
await Meteor.callAsync('removeRoomOwner', room._id, userId);

const room = Rooms.findOne({ _id: rid });
if (!room) {
  // stale rid: refetch rooms and abort
}

const isExistingRoom = (rid: string | undefined): rid is string =>
  typeof rid === 'string' && rid.length > 0 && Rooms.findOne({ _id: rid }) != null;

try {
  await Meteor.callAsync('removeRoomOwner', rid, userId);
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof Meteor.Error && err.error === 'error-invalid-room') {
    // room gone: refresh UI, do not retry same rid
  }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a room name instead of its _id; the room was deleted before the demotion call executed; truncated or mistyped ID string.

Common situations: Stale channel settings page after the channel was deleted; environment-to-environment data copies with different IDs; automation composing rid from slugs.

Related errors

• error-invalid-room
• 403
• error-invalid-arguments
• error-invalid-command
• error-invalid-custom-field-value

AI-assisted analysis of RocketChat/Rocket.Chat@b2c16d5842 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0339404539600a60. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at apps/meteor/server/meteor-methods/rooms/removeRoomOwner.ts:28

import { methodDeprecationLogger } from '../../lib/deprecationWarningLogger';
import { notifyOnSubscriptionChangedById } from '../../lib/notifyListener';
import { syncRoomRolePriorityForUserAndRoom } from '../../lib/roles/syncRoomRolePriority';
import { settings } from '../../settings';

declare module '@rocket.chat/ddp-client' {
	// eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/naming-convention
	interface ServerMethods {
		removeRoomOwner(rid: string, userId: string): boolean;
	}
}

export const removeRoomOwner = async (fromUserId: string, rid: string, userId: string): Promise<boolean> => {
	check(rid, String);
	check(userId, String);

	const room = await Rooms.findOneById(rid, { projection: { t: 1, federated: 1, federation: 1 } });
	if (!room) {
		throw new Meteor.Error('error-invalid-room', 'Invalid room', {
			method: 'removeRoomOwner',
		});
	}

	if (!(await hasPermissionAsync(fromUserId, 'set-owner', rid)) && !isRoomFederated(room)) {
		throw new Meteor.Error('error-not-allowed', 'Not allowed', {
			method: 'removeRoomOwner',
		});
	}

	const user = await Users.findOneById(userId);
	if (!user?.username) {
		throw new Meteor.Error('error-invalid-user', 'Invalid user', {
			method: 'removeRoomOwner',
		});
	}

	const subscription = await Subscriptions.findOneByRoomIdAndUserId(rid, user._id);

View on GitHub (pinned to b2c16d5842)