ipfs/kubo · error

attempted to print nil peer

Error message

attempted to print nil peer

What it means

Guard in printPeer, the output builder for `ipfs id`: the resolved peer.ID is the empty string, meaning identity lookup produced no peer rather than a real node identity. This is an internal invariant check — normally unreachable from the CLI since the command reads the node's own identity — and the peerstore is not queried further.

Source

Thrown at core/commands/id.go:151

				output = strings.Replace(output, "\\t", "\t", -1)
				fmt.Fprint(w, output)
			} else {
				marshaled, err := json.MarshalIndent(out, "", "\t")
				if err != nil {
					return err
				}
				marshaled = append(marshaled, byte('\n'))
				fmt.Fprintln(w, string(marshaled))
			}
			return nil
		}),
	},
	Type: IdOutput{},
}

func printPeer(keyEnc ke.KeyEncoder, ps pstore.Peerstore, p peer.ID) (any, error) {
	if p == "" {
		return nil, errors.New("attempted to print nil peer")
	}

	info := new(IdOutput)
	info.ID = keyEnc.FormatID(p)

	if pk := ps.PubKey(p); pk != nil {
		pkb, err := ic.MarshalPublicKey(pk)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
		info.PublicKey = base64.StdEncoding.EncodeToString(pkb)
	}

	addrInfo := ps.PeerInfo(p)
	addrs, err := peer.AddrInfoToP2pAddrs(&addrInfo)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 329838acdf)

Solutions

1. Check daemon startup logs for identity/key loading failures; an empty peer ID usually means the node's private key could not be read from IPFS_PATH.
2. Verify the repo's identity key exists and is valid (re-init the repo if it is missing/corrupt), then restart the daemon.

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at core/commands/id.go:151 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of ipfs/kubo@329838acdf (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/32189ed48e895ed1. Report an issue: GitHub.