hyperledger/fabric · error

error reading original config

Error message

error reading original config

What it means

computeUpdt reads the original config proto with io.ReadAll and wraps failures as "error reading original config". This is an OS-level read error on the file given as the original configuration, not a content-format problem.

Source

Thrown at cmd/configtxlator/main.go:196

	}

	err = proto.Unmarshal(in, msg)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error unmarshalling")
	}

	err = protolator.DeepMarshalJSON(output, msg)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error encoding output")
	}

	return nil
}

func computeUpdt(original, updated, output *os.File, channelID string) error {
	origIn, err := io.ReadAll(original)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error reading original config")
	}

	origConf := &cb.Config{}
	err = proto.Unmarshal(origIn, origConf)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error unmarshalling original config")
	}

	updtIn, err := io.ReadAll(updated)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error reading updated config")
	}

	updtConf := &cb.Config{}
	err = proto.Unmarshal(updtIn, updtConf)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error unmarshalling updated config")
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

1. Verify the original file exists and is readable (ls -l, test -r)
2. Fix permissions or re-export the original config from the ordering service
3. In containers, mount the directory containing both config files
4. Re-run the command with the correct path

Example fix

// before
configtxlator compute-update --channel myc --original orig.pb ...
// after
test -r orig.pb && configtxlator compute-update --channel myc --original orig.pb ...

if [ ! -r "$ORIGINAL" ] || [ ! -s "$ORIGINAL" ]; then echo "original config missing/unreadable" >&2; exit 1; fi

When it happens

Trigger: --original path unreadable: bad permissions, missing file, closed pipe, or unmounted volume inside a container.

Common situations: Comparing configs where the original was regenerated with restrictive permissions (e.g. by root in a container), or a script passed a stale temp-file path.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to read file", EACCES, ENOENT and "could not read <path>" errors: when a program can't read a file from disk — this error's family across 49 libraries.

Related errors

• error reading input
• error reading updated config
• error encoding output
• failed to create target folder for connection.json: %s
• error unmarshalling

AI-assisted analysis of hyperledger/fabric@2736b63f8f (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6614e6be8fb298f5. Report an issue: GitHub.