hyperledger/fabric · error

error marshaling

Error message

error marshaling

What it means

This is the generic wrap of a proto.Marshal failure inside CreateSignedEnvelopeWithTLSBinding. The nil case is pre-checked (error 2311), so this fires when the message contains fields that cannot be serialized — e.g. required/invalid field values, oversized data, or nested messages in an inconsistent state — and proto.Marshal returns an error.

Source

Thrown at protoutil/txutils.go:102

) (*common.Envelope, error) {
	payloadChannelHeader := MakeChannelHeader(txType, msgVersion, channelID, epoch)
	payloadChannelHeader.TlsCertHash = tlsCertHash
	var err error
	payloadSignatureHeader := &common.SignatureHeader{}

	if signer != nil {
		payloadSignatureHeader, err = NewSignatureHeader(signer)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
	}

	if !dataMsg.ProtoReflect().IsValid() {
		return nil, errors.New("error marshaling: proto: Marshal called with nil")
	}
	data, err := proto.Marshal(dataMsg)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.Wrap(err, "error marshaling")
	}

	paylBytes := MarshalOrPanic(
		&common.Payload{
			Header: MakePayloadHeader(payloadChannelHeader, payloadSignatureHeader),
			Data:   data,
		},
	)

	var sig []byte
	if signer != nil {
		sig, err = signer.Sign(paylBytes)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
	}

	env := &common.Envelope{

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

1. Log and inspect the wrapped underlying proto error to identify the offending field
2. Validate the message fields (enums, nested messages) before marshaling
3. Regenerate protobuf Go code with a runtime version matching the dependency (google.golang.org/protobuf vs github.com/golang/protobuf)
4. Reduce payload size if limits are being exceeded

Example fix

// before
env, err := protoutil.CreateSignedEnvelopeWithTLSBinding(t, chID, creator, msg, nil, 0)
// after
if err := msg.ProtoReflect().IsValid(); !err { return nil, errors.New("invalid msg") }
env, err := protoutil.CreateSignedEnvelopeWithTLSBinding(t, chID, creator, msg, nil, 0)
if err != nil {
    return nil, fmt.Errorf("create envelope: %w", err)
}

func validateMarshalable(msg proto.Message) error {
    if msg == nil || !msg.ProtoReflect().IsValid() {
        return fmt.Errorf("nil/invalid message")
    }
    if _, err := proto.Marshal(msg); err != nil {
        return fmt.Errorf("pre-marshal check failed: %w", err)
    }
    return nil
}

data, err := protoutil.CreateSignedEnvelopeWithTLSBinding(t, chID, signer, msg, nil, 0)
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("marshal failed for %T: %w", msg, err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling CreateSignedEnvelopeWithTLSBinding with a message whose serialization fails: invalid enum values, deep recursion/size limits exceeded, or a corrupt nested proto message.

Common situations: Encoding a message assembled from unchecked external input; protobuf runtime/library version mismatches between generated code and runtime; extremely large payloads exceeding size limits in constrained environments.

Related errors

• marshal failed: proto: Marshal called with nil
• failed to marshal args
• error marshaling: proto: Marshal called with nil
• malformed org definition for org: %s
• error encode input

AI-assisted analysis of hyperledger/fabric@2736b63f8f (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/86b4736f007acb47. Report an issue: GitHub.