derailed/k9s · error

unable to parse path: %q

Error message

unable to parse path: %q

What it means

The Workload aggregated view composes row paths as 'gvr|namespace|name'; parsePath (internal/view/workload.go:69) splits on '|' and requires exactly 3 tokens. showRes (Enter on a row) calls parsePath and flashes this error when the selected row's path does not have the 3-part shape.

Source

Thrown at internal/view/workload.go:82

		ui.KeyY:      ui.NewKeyAction(yamlAction, w.yamlCmd, true),
		ui.KeyD:      ui.NewKeyAction("Describe", w.describeCmd, true),
	})
}

func parsePath(path string) (*client.GVR, string, bool) {
	tt := strings.Split(path, "|")
	if len(tt) != 3 {
		slog.Error("Unable to parse workload path", slogs.Path, path)
		return client.NoGVR, client.FQN("", ""), false
	}

	return client.NewGVR(tt[0]), client.FQN(tt[1], tt[2]), true
}

func (*Workload) showRes(app *App, _ ui.Tabular, _ *client.GVR, path string) {
	gvr, fqn, ok := parsePath(path)
	if !ok {
		app.Flash().Err(fmt.Errorf("unable to parse path: %q", path))
		return
	}
	app.gotoResource(gvr.String(), fqn, false, true)
}

func (w *Workload) deleteCmd(evt *tcell.EventKey) *tcell.EventKey {
	selections := w.GetTable().GetSelectedItems()
	if len(selections) == 0 {
		return evt
	}

	w.Stop()
	defer w.Start()
	{
		msg := fmt.Sprintf("Delete %s %s?", w.GVR().R(), selections[0])
		if len(selections) > 1 {
			msg = fmt.Sprintf("Delete %d marked %s?", len(selections), w.GVR())
		}

View on GitHub (pinned to 2d3ccc6ba2)

Solutions

1. Check ~/.config/k9s/views.yml for a workload view override and remove/repair it so col 1 remains the gvr|ns|name path
2. Navigate to the concrete resource view directly (:deploy, :po) and open the resource from there
3. Reproduce what the row contains: k9s logs print 'Unable to parse workload path' with the raw value — use it to see which token is missing
4. Upgrade k9s if the path format changed between versions (custom fork vs upstream)

Example fix

// before: path = "v1/deployments ns1 web" (spaces, not '|')
// -> unable to parse path: "v1/deployments ns1 web"

// after: canonical 3-token path
// path = "apps/v1/deployments|ns1|web"
// parsePath -> GVR(apps/v1/deployments), FQN("ns1/web"), true

// guard the composed path before navigation
func validWorkloadPath(p string) bool {
    tt := strings.Split(p, "|")
    return len(tt) == 3 && tt[0] != "" && tt[2] != ""
}

When it happens

Trigger: Pressing Enter on a workload row whose path column is not 'gvr|ns|name' — caused by a views.yaml column override for the workload view replacing the composed first column, or an empty namespace/name collapsing the segments.

Common situations: Customizing the workload (pulses) view columns and dropping/reordering the path column; cluster-scoped resources rendered in workload with empty namespace producing 'gvr||name' still parses, but a fully mangled cell does not; forks that change the path format.

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

• no column index for %s
• unable to locate replicas from %s
• re.Description()
• no benchmark dir found in context
• no path specified in context

AI-assisted analysis of derailed/k9s@2d3ccc6ba2 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2d549db16a5bc9e4. Report an issue: GitHub.