apache/answer · error

query user failed: %w

Error message

query user failed: %w

What it means

Fires in ResetPassword when userRepo.GetByEmail returns a database error while looking up the user by the supplied or prompted email. This is a storage/query failure (connection loss, SQL error, table missing), not an 'absent user' case — that is reported separately as 'user not found'.

Source

Thrown at internal/cli/reset_password.go:115

	userRepo := user.NewUserRepo(dataData)
	authRepo := auth.NewAuthRepo(dataData)
	apiKeyRepo := api_key.NewAPIKeyRepo(dataData)
	authSvc := authService.NewAuthService(authRepo, apiKeyRepo)

	email := strings.TrimSpace(opts.Email)
	if email == "" {
		reader := bufio.NewReader(os.Stdin)
		fmt.Print("Please input user email: ")
		emailInput, err := reader.ReadString('\n')
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("read email input failed: %w", err)
		}
		email = strings.TrimSpace(emailInput)
	}

	userInfo, exist, err := userRepo.GetByEmail(ctx, email)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("query user failed: %w", err)
	}
	if !exist {
		return fmt.Errorf("user not found: %s", email)
	}

	fmt.Printf("You are going to reset password for user: %s\n", email)

	password := strings.TrimSpace(opts.Password)

	if password != "" {
		printWarning("Passing password via command line may be recorded in shell history")
		if err := checker.CheckPassword(password); err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("password validation failed: %w", err)
		}
	} else {
		password, err = promptForPassword()
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("password input failed: %w", err)

View on GitHub (pinned to 3b9f137061)

Solutions

1. Verify DB connectivity and that required tables exist (run migrations).
2. Inspect the wrapped driver error for the root cause.
3. Check DB server logs for errors around the time of the lookup.

if err := db.Ping(); err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("db down: %w", err) }
// ensure migrations applied so users table exists

if err := cli.ResetPassword(ctx, dataDir, opts); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "query user failed") {
        log.Fatalf("DB query failed; check migrations and server health: %v", err)
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: userRepo.GetByEmail executes a query that errors — DB connection dropped mid-session, users table missing/corrupt, query timeout, SQL syntax/driver mismatch.

Common situations: Database schema not migrated (missing users/auth tables), connection pooled but server restarted, DB under heavy load causing timeouts.

Understand the failure class

Background: Database query failed: Internal Server Error 500s wrapping SQL, Prisma, and connection failures — what to check first — this error's family across 16 libraries.

Related errors

• get config failed: %w
• update site info failed: %w
• update plugin status failed: %w
• connect database failed: %w
• initialize data layer failed: %w

AI-assisted analysis of apache/answer@3b9f137061 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8bcb30f8de24fe83. Report an issue: GitHub.