What causes "node ids missing" in hashicorp/nomad?

Return early with a success/no-op if len(nodeIDs) == 0 before calling DeleteNode.

node ids missing

Error message

node ids missing

What it means

deleteNodeTxn rejects a request to delete nodes when the supplied node ID slice is empty. It is an internal guard so a no-op batch delete never commits an index bump or emits node deregistration events. It surfaces to callers of StateStore.DeleteNode as a generic error.

Source

Thrown at nomad/state/state_store.go:1071

	return nil
}

// DeleteNode deregisters a batch of nodes
func (s *StateStore) DeleteNode(msgType structs.MessageType, index uint64, nodes []string) error {
	txn := s.db.WriteTxn(index)
	defer txn.Abort()

	err := s.deleteNodeTxn(txn, index, nodes)
	if err != nil {
		return nil
	}
	return txn.Commit()
}

func (s *StateStore) deleteNodeTxn(txn *txn, index uint64, nodes []string) error {
	if len(nodes) == 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("node ids missing")
	}

	for _, nodeID := range nodes {
		existing, err := txn.First("nodes", "id", nodeID)
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("node lookup failed: %s: %v", nodeID, err)
		}
		if existing == nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("node not found: %s", nodeID)
		}

		// Delete the node
		if err := txn.Delete("nodes", existing); err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("node delete failed: %s: %v", nodeID, err)
		}

		node := existing.(*structs.Node)
		if err := deleteNodeCSIPlugins(txn, node, index); err != nil {

View on GitHub (pinned to 482b49bf1a)

Solutions

Return early with a success/no-op if len(nodeIDs) == 0 before calling DeleteNode.
Reject the request in the HTTP/RPC handler with a 400/invalid-params error before touching the state store.
Inspect where the ID list is built and fix the upstream filtering that dropped all IDs.

Example fix

// before
if err := store.DeleteNode(1000, nodeIDs); err != nil { ... }
// after
if len(nodeIDs) == 0 {
    return nil // or return a 400 invalid-params error
}
if err := store.DeleteNode(1000, nodeIDs); err != nil { ... }

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

if len(nodeIDs) == 0 {
    return fmt.Errorf("at least one node id is required")
}

Try / catch

if err := store.DeleteNode(idx, nodeIDs); err != nil {
    if err.Error() == "node ids missing" {
        return fmt.Errorf("no node ids supplied")
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Validate request payloads at the RPC/HTTP layer before touching the state store.
Check that ID-list construction (filters, dedup) never silently empties the list.
Return explicit empty-parameter errors to API clients with 400 status.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling StateStore.DeleteNode (indirectly via deleteNodeTxn) with a zero-length nodes slice, typically because the caller built the list from an empty request payload.

Common situations: An HTTP Node.Deregister (batch) request with an empty node_ids array; a derived list of node IDs filtered down to nothing before calling DeleteNode.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/nomad@482b49bf1a (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a376d5b00e9acfcc. Report an issue: GitHub.