What causes "while loading %s: %w" in crowdsecurity/crowdsec?

Look at the wrapped inner error in the message to see whether it is a read or a YAML parse failure, then fix that file.

while loading %s: %w

Error message

while loading %s: %w

What it means

LoadAllTests walks the hub test folder and, for each subdirectory, calls LoadTestItem. Any failure from loading a single test item is wrapped as 'while loading <name>: %w' so the report identifies which test directory failed to load. LoadAllTests aborts on the first failing item rather than continuing with the rest.

Source

Thrown at pkg/hubtest/hubtest.go:222

	if err != nil {
		return HubTestItem, err
	}

	h.Tests = append(h.Tests, testItem)

	return testItem, nil
}

func (h *HubTest) LoadAllTests() error {
	testsFolder, err := os.ReadDir(h.HubTestPath)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}

	for _, f := range testsFolder {
		if f.IsDir() {
			if _, err := h.LoadTestItem(f.Name()); err != nil {
				return fmt.Errorf("while loading %s: %w", f.Name(), err)
			}
		}
	}

	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 909b515798)

Solutions

Look at the wrapped inner error in the message to see whether it is a read or a YAML parse failure, then fix that file.
Fix the YAML syntax in the named test directory's config.yaml (validate with `yamllint` or `python -c 'import yaml,sys;yaml.safe_load(open(sys.argv[1]))' <file>`).
Restore the missing config.yaml (e.g. `git checkout -- tests/<name>/config.yaml`) if it was deleted or not copied.
Remove or fix any stray directory under the tests folder that is not a valid hub test item.

Example fix

null

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

entries, _ := os.ReadDir(testsFolder)
for _, e := range entries {
    if !e.IsDir() { continue }
    if _, err := os.Stat(filepath.Join(testsFolder, e.Name(), "config.yaml")); err != nil {
        return fmt.Errorf("test dir %s has no config.yaml", e.Name())
    }
}

Try / catch

err := h.LoadAllTests(ctx)
if err != nil {
    var wrapped interface{ Unwrap() error }
    if errors.As(err, &inner) { log.Printf("bad test: %v", inner) }
    return err
}

Prevention

Keep test directories complete: every test dir must contain config.yaml.
Validate test YAML in CI before running LoadAllTests.
Clean stray directories out of the tests folder.

When it happens

Trigger: LoadAllTests encounters a test directory whose config.yaml is missing, unreadable, or contains invalid YAML, causing LoadTestItem (and thus NewTest) to return an error.

Common situations: A partially copied or checked-out hub test directory; a test folder missing its config file; hand-edited test YAML with syntax errors; permissions on the tests directory; a stray non-test directory inside the tests folder that lacks a config.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of crowdsecurity/crowdsec@909b515798 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2fbd19ad8d5fb62e. Report an issue: GitHub.