hyperledger/fabric · error

error reading updated config

Error message

error reading updated config

What it means

Returned by computeUpdt in configtxlator when io.ReadAll fails on the 'updated' config input stream (stdin or uploaded file). The updated configuration could not be read at all — the original config may have parsed fine, but the second input never made it to the diff computation.

Source

Thrown at cmd/configtxlator/main.go:207

	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")
	}

	cu, err := update.Compute(origConf, updtConf)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error computing config update")
	}

	cu.ChannelId = channelID

	outBytes, err := proto.Marshal(cu)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.Wrapf(err, "error marshaling computed config update")

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

1. Confirm the updated file exists, is non-empty, and is readable
2. Re-run the encode step that produces the updated proto and check its exit code
3. Fix permissions or correct the --updated path
4. Test in a local directory before containerized runs

Example fix

// before
configtxlator compute-update --original orig.pb --updated updt.pb ...
// after
ls -l updt.pb && configtxlator compute-update --original orig.pb --updated updt.pb ...

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

When it happens

Trigger: --updated path unreadable: missing file, permissions, broken pipe from a producer process, container mount issues.

Common situations: A script edits config.json then encodes to updated.pb but the encode step failed silently, leaving an empty or absent file; or wrong path passed to --updated.

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 original 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/04e21d25551bbec8. Report an issue: GitHub.