apache/cassandra · error · InvalidRequestException

Invalid paging state.

Error message

Invalid paging state.

What it means

DescribeStatement (DESCRIBE output for schema/tables/etc.) deserializes the client-supplied PagingState blob to continue pagination; if the blob cannot be decoded (DataInputStream/ByteArrayInputStream I/O failure), it throws InvalidRequestException('Invalid paging state.').

Solutions

1. Restart pagination from the beginning (null paging state) instead of reusing an opaque/incompatible state.
2. Only pass PagingState values returned by the exact same statement type on a compatible Cassandra version.
3. Don't mutate, truncate, or base64-round-trip the paging state bytes incorrectly; if persisting, store the raw bytes verbatim.
4. Catch InvalidRequestException and fall back to a fresh first-page query.

Example fix

// before
state = oldStateFromOtherCommand; // incompatible blob
result = session.execute(describeStatement.setPagingState(state));
// after
try {
    result = session.execute(describeStatement.setPagingState(savedState));
} catch (InvalidRequestException e) {
    result = session.execute(describeStatement); // restart from page 1
}

// only reuse paging states obtained from the same statement type/version
if (savedState == null || savedState.remaining <= 0 || !savedState.sourceCommand.equals("DESCRIBE")) savedState = null;

boolean isValidPagingState(byte[] b) { return b != null && b.length > 0 && b.length <= 65535; }

try { rs = session.execute(stmt.setPagingState(savedState)); } catch (InvalidRequestException e) { if (e.getMessage().equals("Invalid paging state.")) { rs = session.execute(stmt); /* restart from first page */ } else throw e; }

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a PagingState produced by a different statement/version, a truncated or hand-crafted byte buffer, or one whose internal format doesn't match the current reader, causing an IOException during getPagingState's readUTF/readInt sequence.

Common situations: Client code persisting paging state across process restarts with a different Cassandra version; copying pagingState bytes between different DESCRIBE commands; truncating the byte buffer; driver-level manipulation of the state blob.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

• A storage-attached index cannot be created over multiple…
• A TTL must be greater or equal to 0, but was
• Accord transaction uses dropped tables
• All arguments must have the same vector dimensions
• Attempted to delete an element from a list which is null

AI-assisted analysis of apache/cassandra@88fd0f6a0e (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/61f3f247122af156. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/java/org/apache/cassandra/cql3/statements/DescribeStatement.java:218

    protected abstract List<ColumnSpecification> metadata(ClientState state);

    private PagingState getPagingState(long nextPageOffset, UUID schemaVersion)
    {
        try (DataOutputBuffer out = new DataOutputBuffer())
        {
            out.writeShort(PAGING_STATE_VERSION);
            out.writeUTF(FBUtilities.getReleaseVersionString());
            out.write(UUIDGen.decompose(schemaVersion));
            out.writeLong(nextPageOffset);

            return new PagingState(out.asNewBuffer(),
                                   null,
                                   Integer.MAX_VALUE,
                                   Integer.MAX_VALUE);
        }
        catch (IOException e)
        {
            throw new InvalidRequestException("Invalid paging state.", e);
        }
    }

    private long getOffset(PagingState pagingState, UUID schemaVersion)
    {
        if (pagingState == null)
            return 0L;

        try (DataInputBuffer in = new DataInputBuffer(pagingState.partitionKey, false))
        {
            checkTrue(in.readShort() == PAGING_STATE_VERSION, "Incompatible paging state");

            final String pagingStateServerVersion = in.readUTF();
            final String releaseVersion = FBUtilities.getReleaseVersionString();
            checkTrue(pagingStateServerVersion.equals(releaseVersion),
                      "The server version of the paging state %s is different from the one of the server %s",
                      pagingStateServerVersion,
                      releaseVersion);

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