apache/iceberg · warning

Skipping commit for table {} task {}: a DV writer reported a

Error message

Skipping commit for table {} task {}: a DV writer reported an error.

What it means

The EqualityConvertCommitter buffers DV write results per task; if a writer marked its result as abort, the committer deliberately skips committing that task's data files and deletes the uncommitted DVs to keep the table consistent. This is a warning of a failed DV writer, not a commit bug.

Source

Thrown at flink/v1.20/flink/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/flink/maintenance/operator/EqualityConvertCommitter.java:186

    // Emit Trigger for the Aggregator (even on error or no-op).
    output.collect(new StreamRecord<>(Trigger.create(planResult.triggerTimestamp(), 0)));

    bufferedResults.clear();
    planResult = null;

    super.processWatermark(mark);
  }

  @Override
  public void close() throws Exception {
    super.close();
    tableLoader.close();
  }

  private void commitIfNeeded() {
    for (DVWriteResult result : bufferedResults) {
      if (result.isAbort()) {
        LOG.warn(
            "Skipping commit for table {} task {}: a DV writer reported an error.",
            tableName,
            taskName);
        deleteUncommittedDVs();
        return;
      }
    }

    // No-op cycle: the planner emitted an empty plan result (see
    // EqualityConvertPlanner.emitNoOpResult) because the next staging snapshot was filtered by
    // shouldSkip or there was nothing new on staging. processWatermark still forwards a Trigger to
    // TaskResultAggregator, so the maintenance task completes cleanly.
    if (planResult.noOp()) {
      return;
    }

    table.refresh();

View on GitHub (pinned to 86d9c8fc54)

Solutions

  1. Inspect the upstream DV writer task logs for the root-cause failure and fix it (IO, OOM, serialization)
  2. Re-run/restore the maintenance job so affected tasks are rewritten and committed
  3. Verify checkpointing configuration (interval, timeouts) so writer results are not aborted spuriously
  4. Confirm deleteUncommittedDVs() cleaned the orphaned DV files in the write location
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// Ensure writers completed cleanly before commit point
if (bufferedResults.stream().anyMatch(DVWriteResult::isAbort)) {
  // expect commit skip; verify deleteUncommittedDVs ran
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: processWatermark triggers commitIfNeeded(); a buffered DVWriteResult has isAbort() true because its writer task failed (checkpoint failure, upstream error, serializer issue) after producing data files.

Common situations: Flink maintenance job task failures mid-checkpoint; writer OOM or IO errors while producing delete vectors; restoring a job from a checkpoint with partially written results.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid state transition" errors: "status must be X, actually Y", "already rejected/charging/uninstalled", "cannot ... while running" — what they mean when a library rejects your call — this error's family across 31 libraries.

Related errors


AI-assisted analysis of apache/iceberg@86d9c8fc54 (2026-09-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f044932c7fddedb8. Report an issue: GitHub.