hyperledger/fabric · error

error reading connection profile

Error message

error reading connection profile

What it means

GetConfig loads a Hyperledger Fabric connection profile YAML from disk into a NetworkConfig struct. This error wraps any failure from os.ReadFile, meaning the connection profile file could not be read. It is thrown before any YAML parsing happens, so the profile contents are irrelevant.

Source

Thrown at internal/peer/common/networkconfig.go:165

}

// TLSKeyPair contains the private key and certificate for TLS encryption
// not currently used by CLI
type TLSKeyPair struct {
	Key  TLSConfig `yaml:"key"`
	Cert TLSConfig `yaml:"cert"`
}

// GetConfig unmarshals the provided connection profile into a network
// configuration struct
func GetConfig(fileName string) (*NetworkConfig, error) {
	if fileName == "" {
		return nil, errors.New("filename cannot be empty")
	}

	data, err := os.ReadFile(fileName)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.Wrap(err, "error reading connection profile")
	}

	configData := string(data)
	config := &NetworkConfig{}
	err = yaml.Unmarshal([]byte(configData), &config)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.Wrap(err, "error unmarshalling YAML")
	}

	return config, nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

1. Verify the file exists at the given path: ls -l <path>
2. Check read permissions on the file and traverse permissions on its directories
3. Run the command from the directory containing the profile or pass an absolute path
4. Confirm the correct profile file name is passed (e.g. connection-org1.yaml, not connection-org1.json)

Example fix

// before
config, err := common.GetConfig("connection-org1.yaml")
// after
config, err := common.GetConfig("/absolute/path/to/connection-org1.yaml")
if err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("check connection profile path: %v", err)
}

func profileExists(path string) error {
    if path == "" {
        return errors.New("connection profile path is empty")
    }
    info, err := os.Stat(path)
    if err != nil {
        return fmt.Errorf("connection profile not accessible: %w", err)
    }
    if info.IsDir() {
        return fmt.Errorf("%s is a directory, not a file", path)
    }
    return nil
}

config, err := common.GetConfig(profilePath)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "error reading connection profile") {
        log.Fatalf("cannot read connection profile %q: %v", profilePath, err)
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling GetConfig (directly or via peer commands that call validatePeerConnectionParameters / parseConnectionProfile) with an empty-derived file path that exists check fails: file does not exist, path is a directory, or the process lacks read permission.

Common situations: Typo in the connection profile path passed via -f/--config or FABRIC_CFG_PATH settings; running the peer CLI from a different working directory than expected; file permissions changed after container mount; profile deleted or never generated.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Config file not found": what it means and how to fix it in docker-sync, Maven, Vagrant, Turborepo and other tools — this error's family across 60 libraries.

Related errors

• %s is mandatory and cannot be empty
• refusing to generate block which is missing orderer section
• config ID illegal, cannot be empty
• config ID illegal, cannot be longer than %d
• name '%s' for config ID is not allowed

AI-assisted analysis of hyperledger/fabric@2736b63f8f (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fc8dfb37dacd53f2. Report an issue: GitHub.