hashicorp/nomad · error

Service identity must provide at least one target aud value

Error message

Service identity must provide at least one target aud value

What it means

validateIdentity requires that a service's identity block (workload identity for Consul / Vault JWT audience) lists at least one audience value. The identity is used to mint a JWT with `aud` claims; an empty audience list produces a useless token, so validation rejects it.

Solutions

1. Add `aud = ["consul.io"]` (or the intended audiences) inside the identity block.
2. Remove the identity block entirely if workload identity is not needed.
3. Check templating/HCL merging so the aud list is not dropped by variable expansion.

Example fix

// before
service {
  name = "web"
  identity {
    name = "web_identity"
  }
}
// after
service {
  name = "web"
  identity {
    name = "web_identity"
    aud = ["consul.io"]
  }
}

if id := svc.Identity; id != nil && len(id.Audience) == 0 {
  return fmt.Errorf("identity %q must declare at least one aud", id.Name)
}

When it happens

Trigger: A service stanza with `identity { name = "..." }` but no `aud = [...]` array.

Common situations: Omitting the aud array when configuring Consul workload identities; templating the identity block where the audience list variable is empty.

Related errors

• an empty string is an invalid audience
• allocation does not exist
• can only use change_signal=
• change_signal must be specified when using change_mode=
• Duplicate default identities found

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/nomad@482b49bf1a (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0425f60de783c9ed. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at nomad/structs/services.go:936

			mErr.Errors = append(mErr.Errors, err)
		}
	}

	// Services using the Nomad provider do not support Consul connect.
	if s.Connect != nil {
		mErr.Errors = append(mErr.Errors, errors.New("Service with provider nomad cannot include Connect blocks"))
	}
}

// validateIdentity performs validation on workload identity field populated by
// the job mutating hook
func (s *Service) validateIdentity() error {
	if s.Identity == nil {
		return nil
	}

	if len(s.Identity.Audience) == 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("Service identity must provide at least one target aud value")
	}

	return nil
}

// ValidateName checks if the service Name is valid and should be called after
// the name has been interpolated
func (s *Service) ValidateName(name string) error {
	// Ensure the service name is valid per RFC-952 §1
	// (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc952), RFC-1123 §2.1
	// (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123), and RFC-2782
	// (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2782).
	//  This validation is enforced on Nomad, but not on Consul, however if
	//  consul-template is being used, service names with dots in them wont be
	//  admissible.
	re := regexp.MustCompile(`^(?i:[a-z0-9]|[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\-]{0,61}[a-z0-9])$`)
	if !re.MatchString(name) {
		return fmt.Errorf("Service name must be valid per RFC 1123 and can contain only alphanumeric characters or dashes and must be no longer than 63 characters")

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