What causes "unable to parse duration" in crowdsecurity/crowdsec?

Use supported formats: Go duration strings ("300ms", "4h") or " d" for days; convert weeks to hours/days first.

unable to parse duration

Error message

unable to parse duration

What it means

ParseDurationFail is a sentinel error meaning a duration string failed to parse, specifically via crowdsec's cstime.ParseDurationWithDays, which supports Go durations plus day-suffixed values (e.g. "4h", "3d"). It is returned from createDecisionBatch when a decision's duration field is malformed.

Source

Thrown at pkg/database/errors.go:15

package database

import "errors"

var (
	UserExists        = errors.New("user already exist")
	UserNotExists     = errors.New("user doesn't exist")
	HashError         = errors.New("unable to hash")
	InsertFail        = errors.New("unable to insert row")
	QueryFail         = errors.New("unable to query")
	UpdateFail        = errors.New("unable to update")
	DeleteFail        = errors.New("unable to delete")
	ItemNotFound      = errors.New("object not found")
	ParseTimeFail     = errors.New("unable to parse time")
	ParseDurationFail = errors.New("unable to parse duration")
	MarshalFail       = errors.New("unable to serialize")
	BulkError         = errors.New("unable to insert bulk")
	ParseType         = errors.New("unable to parse type")
	InvalidIPOrRange  = errors.New("invalid ip address / range")
	InvalidFilter     = errors.New("invalid filter")
)

View on GitHub (pinned to 909b515798)

Solutions

Use supported formats: Go duration strings ("300ms", "4h") or "<N>d" for days; convert weeks to hours/days first.
If the decision should be permanent, omit Duration and use an empty/unexpired form per models spec instead of an unparseable value.
Validate the duration in the producer before submitting: attempt cstime.ParseDurationWithDays yourself.
Check the wrapped inner error for the exact offending value (echoed in the message).

Example fix

// before
decision.Duration = ptr("2w")
// after
decision.Duration = ptr("14d") // or "336h"

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

func validDuration(s string) bool {
    _, err := cstime.ParseDurationWithDays(s)
    return err == nil
}
// call before submitting: validDuration(*decision.Duration)

Try / catch

if _, err := client.CreateAlert(ctx, alert); err != nil {
    if errors.Is(err, database.ParseDurationFail) {
        return fmt.Errorf("bad decision duration %q: use Go durations or Nd", err)
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Use only Go duration strings or "<N>d" day format
Convert weeks/months to hours/days before submitting
Validate durations in producers with cstime.ParseDurationWithDays

When it happens

Trigger: createDecisionBatch processing decisions whose Duration string is not a valid Go duration or "Nd" day format, e.g. "2w" or an empty/blank string.

Common situations: Custom parsers pushing decisions with non-supported units (weeks, months), empty duration fields in alert JSON produced by third-party tooling, locale-specific spellings.

Understand the failure class

Background: "invalid duration" / "failed to parse duration": why your timeout, interval, or TTL string is rejected and which formats each library accepts — this error's family across 32 libraries.

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

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of crowdsecurity/crowdsec@909b515798 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/819bd1c1457e796c. Report an issue: GitHub.