apache/hadoop · error · IllegalArgumentException

sleepTime = ${sleepTime} < 0

Error message

sleepTime = ${sleepTime} < 0

What it means

The second fail-fast check in RetryLimited's constructor: sleepTime, the fixed delay between retries, must be non-negative. A negative sleep cannot be scheduled and always indicates bad configuration or a swapped-argument bug; the message includes the offending value.

Source

Thrown at hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/retry/RetryPolicies.java:275

   * The actual sleep time of the n-th retry is f(n, sleepTime),
   * where f is a function provided by the subclass implementation.
   *
   * The object of the subclasses should be immutable;
   * otherwise, the subclass must override hashCode(), equals(..) and toString().
   */
  static abstract class RetryLimited implements RetryPolicy {
    final int maxRetries;
    final long sleepTime;
    final TimeUnit timeUnit;
    
    private String myString;

    RetryLimited(int maxRetries, long sleepTime, TimeUnit timeUnit) {
      if (maxRetries < 0) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("maxRetries = " + maxRetries+" < 0");
      }
      if (sleepTime < 0) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("sleepTime = " + sleepTime + " < 0");
      }

      this.maxRetries = maxRetries;
      this.sleepTime = sleepTime;
      this.timeUnit = timeUnit;
    }

    @Override
    public RetryAction shouldRetry(Exception e, int retries, int failovers,
        boolean isIdempotentOrAtMostOnce) throws Exception {
      if (retries >= maxRetries) {
        return new RetryAction(RetryAction.RetryDecision.FAIL, 0 , getReason());
      }
      return new RetryAction(RetryAction.RetryDecision.RETRY,
          timeUnit.toMillis(calculateSleepTime(retries)), getReason());
    }

    protected String getReason() {

View on GitHub (pinned to 2add963021)

Solutions

1. Log the raw config value before policy construction and fix the negative property.
2. Guard computed sleeps with Math.max(0, value) at the source.
3. Re-check the constructor/factory parameter order if the value in the message looks like another argument.

Example fix

// before
RetryPolicy p = RetryPolicies.retryUpToMaximumCount(3, -500, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

// after
long sleepMs = Math.max(0, conf.getLong("my.retry.sleep.ms", 500));
RetryPolicy p = RetryPolicies.retryUpToMaximumCount(3, sleepMs, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

long sleepMs = conf.getLong("my.retry.sleep.ms", 500);
if (sleepMs < 0) {
  throw new IllegalArgumentException(
      "my.retry.sleep.ms must be >= 0, got " + sleepMs);
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a negative sleepTime to any RetryLimited-based factory — negative config values, argument-order mixups (sleepTime and timeUnit/count positions swapped), or computed backoff values that underflow.

Common situations: Hand-edited retry sleep properties set negative; refactors changing parameter order; defaults computed as base - offset going below zero.

Related errors

• maxRetries = ${maxRetries} < 0
• numRetries = ${numRetries} < 0
• sleepMillis = ${sleepMillis} < 0
• pairs must be neither null nor empty.
• min sleep time must be positive number and max sleep time mu

AI-assisted analysis of apache/hadoop@2add963021 (2026-08-22). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8343353292c27452. Report an issue: GitHub.