abiosoft/colima · error

invalid pid

Error message

invalid pid: %v

What it means

`colima daemon status` reads the daemon pid file and parses its content with strconv.Atoi, deliberately discarding the parse error. Any content Atoi cannot parse in full (empty file, trailing newline, spaces, non-numeric text) yields pid 0 and this error fires, echoing the raw file bytes in the message. It means the pid file exists but is corrupt or malformed, not that the daemon misbehaved.

Solutions

1. Remove the stale pid file (the daemon is not running anyway): delete dir()/daemon.pid reported by daemon info, then run `colima daemon start`
2. If it recurs, stop the daemon cleanly with `colima daemon stop` instead of killing the process by hand
3. Patch daemon.go:123-126 to use strconv.Atoi(strings.TrimSpace(string(p))) and surface the parse error instead of ignoring it

Example fix

// before
pid, _ := strconv.Atoi(string(p))
if pid == 0 {
    return fmt.Errorf("invalid pid: %v", string(p))
}

// after
pid, err := strconv.Atoi(strings.TrimSpace(string(p)))
if err != nil || pid <= 0 {
    return fmt.Errorf("invalid pid %q in %s: %w", string(p), info.PidFile, err)
}

// Go: verify the pid file parses BEFORE calling daemon status
func pidFileValid(pidFile string) bool {
    b, err := os.ReadFile(pidFile)
    if err != nil {
        return false
    }
    pid, err := strconv.Atoi(strings.TrimSpace(string(b)))
    return err == nil && pid > 0
}

if !pidFileValid(daemon.Info().PidFile) {
    _ = os.Remove(daemon.Info().PidFile) // stale; start fresh
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling daemon status/start-stop plumbing when info.PidFile exists but is empty (daemon crashed mid-write), contains '123\n' (strconv.Atoi rejects the trailing newline), has whitespace, or was written by a different colima version/profile with a different format.

Common situations: Unclean daemon shutdown (kill -9, host crash) truncating the pid file; running mixed colima versions (brew vs. nightly) sharing the daemon directory; manually editing or `echo $$ >`-ing the pid file; empty file left behind by a failed daemon start.

Related errors

• pid file not found
• process signal(0) returned error
• cannot make dir
• error checking vmnet process
• process not found

AI-assisted analysis of abiosoft/colima@c3a5f9184d (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fa2d94489faff6c8. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at cmd/daemon/daemon.go:125

		}
	}

}

func status() error {
	info := Info()
	if _, err := os.Stat(info.PidFile); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("pid file not found: %w", err)
	}

	// check if process is actually running
	p, err := os.ReadFile(info.PidFile)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error reading pid file: %w", err)
	}
	pid, _ := strconv.Atoi(string(p))
	if pid == 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid pid: %v", string(p))
	}

	process, err := os.FindProcess(pid)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("process not found: %v", err)
	}

	if err := process.Signal(syscall.Signal(0)); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("process signal(0) returned error: %w", err)
	}

	return nil
}

const (
	pidFileName = "daemon.pid"
	logFileName = "daemon.log"
)

View on GitHub (pinned to c3a5f9184d)