crowdsecurity/crowdsec · error

failed to parse %s: %w

Error message

failed to parse %s: %w

What it means

After reading a local item file, newLocalItem unmarshals it as yaml into localItemName to pick up an optional 'name' key. If the file content is not valid yaml (or the top-level structure isn't a mapping), yaml.Unmarshal fails and the error is wrapped in 'failed to parse %s'. The item is skipped/aborted for that file.

Source

Thrown at pkg/cwhub/sync.go:202

		FileName: fileName,
		State: ItemState{
			LocalPath: path,
			local:     true,
			UpToDate:  true,
		},
	}

	// try to read the name from the file
	itemName := localItemName{}

	itemContent, err := os.ReadFile(path)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("failed to read %s: %w", path, err)
	}

	err = yaml.Unmarshal(itemContent, &itemName)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("failed to parse %s: %w", path, err)
	}

	if itemName.Name != "" {
		item.Name = itemName.Name
	}

	return item, nil
}

// ErrSkipPath is a sentinel to skip regular files because "nil, nil" is ambiguous. Returning SkipDir with files would skip the rest of the directory.
var ErrSkipPath = errors.New("sentinel")

func (h *Hub) itemVisit(path string, f os.DirEntry, err error) (*itemSpec, error) {
	if err != nil {
		h.logger.Debugf("while syncing hub dir: %s", err)
		// there is a path error, we ignore the file
		return nil, ErrSkipPath
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 909b515798)

Solutions

1. Validate the file with a yaml linter/parser: `python3 -c 'import yaml,sys; yaml.safe_load(open(sys.argv[1]))' <file>`
2. Fix the syntax error reported at the line indicated in the wrapped message (tabs, indentation, quotes)
3. Remove or rename non-yaml files that end in .yaml out of the config directory
4. If it's a hub item, reinstall it with cscli to restore pristine content

Example fix

// before: config/scenarios/my.yaml
name:	crowdsecurity/my	# tab indentation, parse fails
// after
name: crowdsecurity/my  # spaces only

import (
	"os"
	"gopkg.in/yaml.v3"
)

func validYAML(path string) error {
	b, err := os.ReadFile(path)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	var m map[string]any
	return yaml.Unmarshal(b, &m)
}
// call for each .yaml in the config dir before starting crowdsec

if err := hub.Load(ctx); err != nil {
	if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "failed to parse") {
		var yamlErr *yaml.TypeError
		log.Warnf("bad yaml in config dir: %v", err)
		return nil
	}
	return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: A yaml file in the scanned config directory contains syntax errors: tabs instead of spaces, unclosed quotes, duplicate keys rejected by the parser, or non-mapping content like a bare string or a binary file with a .yaml extension.

Common situations: Hand-edited config files with indentation mistakes; files renamed to .yaml that aren't yaml (e.g. copied logs, editor swap files); copy/paste of yaml with smart quotes or tabs.

Understand the failure class

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

• cannot parse: %s
• failed to parse api client credential configuration file '%s
• while parsing capi whitelist file '%s': %w
• parsing console config file '%s': %w
• document %d: %w

AI-assisted analysis of crowdsecurity/crowdsec@909b515798 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7a7191bad64dc3ea. Report an issue: GitHub.