apache/iceberg · error · ParquetDecodingException

Failed to read from input stream

Error message

Failed to read from input stream

What it means

While decoding an RLE/bit-packed page, the underlying input stream threw an IOException; the reader wraps it in ParquetDecodingException with this message and the cause attached. It indicates the page bytes could not be read from the input.

Source

Thrown at arrow/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/arrow/vectorized/parquet/BaseVectorizedParquetValuesReader.java:209

          this.currentCount = numGroups * 8;
          if (this.packedValuesBuffer.length < this.currentCount) {
            this.packedValuesBuffer = new int[this.currentCount];
          }
          packedValuesBufferIdx = 0;
          int valueIndex = 0;
          while (valueIndex < this.currentCount) {
            // values are bit packed 8 at a time, so reading bitWidth will always work
            ByteBuffer buffer = inputStream.slice(bitWidth);
            this.packer.unpack8Values(
                buffer, buffer.position(), this.packedValuesBuffer, valueIndex);
            valueIndex += 8;
          }
          return;
        default:
          throw new ParquetDecodingException("not a valid mode " + this.mode);
      }
    } catch (IOException e) {
      throw new ParquetDecodingException("Failed to read from input stream", e);
    }
  }

  @Override
  public boolean readBoolean() {
    return this.readInteger() != 0;
  }

  @Override
  public void skip() {
    throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
  }

  @Override
  public int readValueDictionaryId() {
    return readInteger();
  }

View on GitHub (pinned to 86d9c8fc54)

Solutions

1. Retry the scan if the cause is a transient I/O error (S3/HDFS).
2. Re-validate and regenerate the source Parquet file if it is truncated or corrupt.
3. Check cause chain (ParquetDecodingException.getCause) to distinguish I/O errors from corruption.

// catch (ParquetDecodingException e) {
//   if (e.getCause() instanceof IOException) { retryWithBackoff(); } // transient I/O
//   else throw e; // corruption
// }

When it happens

Trigger: readNextGroup reading past the end of a truncated page, network/filesystem I/O failure mid-scan, or corrupt Parquet footer offsets.

Common situations: Truncated files from failed writes, HDFS/S3 transient errors during long scans, mismatched file checksums.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to read file", EACCES, ENOENT and "could not read <path>" errors: when a program can't read a file from disk — this error's family across 49 libraries.

Related errors

• Unsupported variant: shredded typed_value array
• Non-supported bytesWidth: " + bytesWidth
• not a valid mode " + this.mode
• skip is not supported
• Unrecognized mode: " + mode

AI-assisted analysis of apache/iceberg@86d9c8fc54 (2026-09-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/38ecc1a4fc869391. Report an issue: GitHub.