crowdsecurity/crowdsec · error

no configuration paths provided

Error message

no configuration paths provided

What it means

NewConfig calls loadConfigurationPaths, which expects the config_paths section to have been decoded into Config.ConfigPaths. This error means ConfigPaths is nil — no 'config_paths' section was present (or was explicitly empty) in the configuration file. Without it CrowdSec cannot resolve where configs, data, hub and notifications live, so startup aborts.

Source

Thrown at pkg/csconfig/config_paths.go:21

import (
	"errors"
	"path/filepath"
)

type ConfigurationPaths struct {
	ConfigDir          string `yaml:"config_dir"`
	DataDir            string `yaml:"data_dir,omitempty"`
	SimulationFilePath string `yaml:"simulation_path,omitempty"`
	HubIndexFile       string `yaml:"index_path,omitempty"` // path of the .index.json
	HubDir             string `yaml:"hub_dir,omitempty"`
	PluginDir          string `yaml:"plugin_dir,omitempty"`
	NotificationDir    string `yaml:"notification_dir,omitempty"`
	PatternDir         string `yaml:"pattern_dir,omitempty"`
}

func (c *Config) loadConfigurationPaths() error {
	if c.ConfigPaths == nil {
		return errors.New("no configuration paths provided")
	}

	if c.ConfigPaths.ConfigDir == "" {
		c.ConfigPaths.ConfigDir = filepath.Dir(c.FilePath)
	}

	if c.ConfigPaths.DataDir == "" {
		return errors.New("please provide a data directory with the 'data_dir' directive in the 'config_paths' section")
	}

	if c.ConfigPaths.HubDir == "" {
		c.ConfigPaths.HubDir = filepath.Join(c.ConfigPaths.ConfigDir, "hub")
	}

	if c.ConfigPaths.HubIndexFile == "" {
		c.ConfigPaths.HubIndexFile = filepath.Join(c.ConfigPaths.HubDir, ".index.json")
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 909b515798)

Solutions

1. Add a 'config_paths:' section with at least config_dir and data_dir to the configuration file passed via -c
2. If constructing Config in code, initialize cfg.ConfigPaths = &ConfigurationPaths{ConfigDir: ..., DataDir: ...} before calling NewConfig
3. Copy a reference config (e.g. config/config.yaml in the repo or /etc/crowdsec/config.yaml) and adapt the paths

Example fix

// before (config.yaml)
api:
  server:
    enabled: true

// after (config.yaml)
config_paths:
  config_dir: /etc/crowdsec
  data_dir: /var/lib/crowdsec/data
api:
  server:
    enabled: true

if cfg.ConfigPaths == nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("config file must contain a 'config_paths' section")
}

if _, err := csconfig.NewConfig(configPath, false); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "no configuration paths") {
        log.Fatalf("config file %s is missing the config_paths section", configPath)
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling csconfig.NewConfig (or LoadConfigurationPaths) with a Config whose ConfigPaths field was never populated — typically the YAML file has no 'config_paths:' section, or the caller built a Config struct programmatically and left ConfigPaths nil.

Common situations: Hand-written minimal config.yaml missing the config_paths block; upgrading from a very old install whose config predates the config_paths section; test harnesses constructing Config{} directly without setting ConfigPaths.

Understand the failure class

Background: "X is required", "must be set", "cannot be empty": the missing-required-config error family, from Vertex AI project/location to WeChat keys — this error's family across 18 libraries.

Related errors

• while parsing '%s': %w
• loading online client credentials: %w
• failed to load postovflw parser patterns: %w
• failed to load parser config: %w
• path must start with /

AI-assisted analysis of crowdsecurity/crowdsec@909b515798 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/28166da694a6355d. Report an issue: GitHub.