hyperledger/fabric · critical

peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.re

Error message

peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.requiredPeerCount (%d) cannot be less than zero

What it means

loadPrivDataConfig panics when the configured implicit collection dissemination requiredPeerCount is negative. requiredPeerCount is the number of peers that must each acknowledge private data dissemination, so a negative value is nonsensical and the gossip privdata layer fails fast at config load time via panic rather than returning an error.

Source

Thrown at gossip/privdata/config.go:77

	c.ReconcileBatchSize = viper.GetInt("peer.gossip.pvtData.reconcileBatchSize")
	if c.ReconcileBatchSize == 0 {
		logger.Warning("Configuration key peer.gossip.pvtData.reconcileBatchSize isn't set, defaulting to", reconcileBatchSizeDefault)
		c.ReconcileBatchSize = reconcileBatchSizeDefault
	}

	c.ReconciliationEnabled = viper.GetBool("peer.gossip.pvtData.reconciliationEnabled")

	requiredPeerCount := viper.GetInt("peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.requiredPeerCount")

	maxPeerCount := implicitCollectionMaxPeerCountDefault
	if viper.Get("peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.maxPeerCount") != nil {
		// allow override maxPeerCount to 0 that will effectively disable dissemination on the peer
		maxPeerCount = viper.GetInt("peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.maxPeerCount")
	}

	if requiredPeerCount < 0 {
		panic(fmt.Sprintf("peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.requiredPeerCount (%d) cannot be less than zero",
			requiredPeerCount))
	}
	if maxPeerCount < requiredPeerCount {
		panic(fmt.Sprintf("peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.maxPeerCount (%d) cannot be less than requiredPeerCount (%d)",
			maxPeerCount, requiredPeerCount))
	}

	c.ImplicitCollDisseminationPolicy.RequiredPeerCount = requiredPeerCount
	c.ImplicitCollDisseminationPolicy.MaxPeerCount = maxPeerCount
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

1. Edit core.yaml so requiredPeerCount is >= 0
2. Check overriding environment variables for a negative value
3. Restore a sane default (typically 1) if the config file was corrupted

Example fix

// before (core.yaml)
peer:
  gossip:
    pvtData:
      implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy:
        requiredPeerCount: -1
// after
        requiredPeerCount: 1

const required = viper.GetInt("peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.requiredPeerCount")
if required < 0 {
    return fmt.Errorf("requiredPeerCount %d invalid; must be >= 0", required)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Setting peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.requiredPeerCount to a negative number in core.yaml (or via env override) and calling GlobalConfig / loadPrivDataConfig at peer startup.

Common situations: Typo in core.yaml (e.g. -1 placeholder), env var CORE_PEER_GOSSIP_PVTDATA_IMPLICITCOLLDISSEMINATIONPOLICY_REQUIREDPEERCOUNT=-1, templated config that interpolates to a negative number.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid value" and "allowed values are" config errors: what your library rejected and how to fix it — this error's family across 41 libraries.

Related errors

• peer.gossip.pvtData.implicitCollectionDisseminationPolicy.ma
• unable to load key at '%s'
• unable to load cert at '%s'
• Block data is empty
• Block header is nil

AI-assisted analysis of hyperledger/fabric@2736b63f8f (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1979ea8a0023338d. Report an issue: GitHub.