caddyserver/caddy · error

--input is required

Error message

--input is required

What it means

ECH Provision calls setConfigsFromStorage to load all persisted ECH configs from the 'ech/configs' storage prefix, and that load failed. This is the first read of ECH state after acquiring the exclusive 'ech_rotation' storage lock, so any storage List/Load failure surfaces here.

Source

Thrown at cmd/storagefuncs.go:72

		var jsonError *json.SyntaxError
		if errors.As(err, &jsonError) {
			return nil, nil
		}
		return nil, err
	}

	return &tmpStruct, nil
}

func cmdImportStorage(fl Flags) (int, error) {
	importStorageCmdConfigFlag := fl.String("config")
	importStorageCmdImportFile := fl.String("input")

	if importStorageCmdConfigFlag == "" {
		return caddy.ExitCodeFailedStartup, errors.New("--config is required")
	}
	if importStorageCmdImportFile == "" {
		return caddy.ExitCodeFailedStartup, errors.New("--input is required")
	}

	// extract storage from config if possible
	storageCfg, err := determineStorage(importStorageCmdConfigFlag, "")
	if err != nil {
		return caddy.ExitCodeFailedStartup, err
	}

	// load specified storage or fallback to default
	var stor certmagic.Storage
	ctx, cancel := caddy.NewContext(caddy.Context{Context: context.Background()})
	defer cancel()
	if storageCfg != nil && storageCfg.StorageRaw != nil {
		val, err := ctx.LoadModule(storageCfg, "StorageRaw")
		if err != nil {
			return caddy.ExitCodeFailedStartup, err
		}
		stor, err = val.(caddy.StorageConverter).CertMagicStorage()

View on GitHub (pinned to 50e54ee279)

Solutions

1. Check the wrapped error for the failing storage operation and backend.
2. Restore storage availability/read access and restart Caddy so Provision retries.
3. If local storage is corrupt, stop Caddy and remove the 'ech/configs' folder from the data directory — ECH configs will be regenerated (clients repick configs after DNS republish).
4. Ensure the same storage backend is shared consistently across cluster instances.

Example fix

# before: unreadable ech data
sudo ls /var/lib/caddy/ech/configs
# after: reset ech state to force regeneration
systemctl stop caddy && rm -rf /var/lib/caddy/ech/configs && systemctl start caddy

// Pre-flight storage readability for ECH state:
keys, err := storage.List(ctx, "ech/configs", false)
if err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("ech storage unreadable: %w", err) }

Fail startup loudly (the error already aborts TLS app provisioning), fix storage, restart; transient backend errors clear on retry.

When it happens

Trigger: storage.List(ctx, "ech/configs", false) or a subsequent per-config load fails: backend unavailable, permission denied, or one of the nested loads returned an unexpected error (the cleanup path in loadECHConfig already swallows per-config problems, so this is usually the List itself or a hard load failure).

Common situations: Remote storage outage at startup; data directory not readable; storage schema left in a bad state after an interrupted rotation; permissions changed under a running deployment.

Related errors

• --output is required
• cannot reuse socket %v: unix socket is already in use by ano
• protocol argument was not a string
• %s is invalid policy
• ErrInvalidSplitPath

AI-assisted analysis of caddyserver/caddy@50e54ee279 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0b67a441357f6901. Report an issue: GitHub.