kovidgoyal/kitty · warning

Could not read from included config file: {}, ignoring

Error message

Could not read from included config file: {}, ignoring

What it means

An included config file exists but could not be read (OSError other than not-found: permission denied, I/O error, directory instead of file); kitty skips it and continues.

Source

Thrown at kitty/conf/utils.py:357

                            effective_config_lines,
                            allow_geninclude=allow_geninclude,
                        )
            return
        else:
            if not os.path.isabs(val):
                val = os.path.join(base_path_for_includes, val)
            vals = (val,)
        for val in vals:
            if memory.seen(val):
                continue
            try:
                with open(val, encoding='utf-8', errors='replace') as include:
                    with currently_parsing.set_file(val):
                        _parse(include, parse_conf_item, ans, memory, accumulate_bad_lines, effective_config_lines, allow_geninclude=allow_geninclude)
            except FileNotFoundError:
                log_error(f'Could not find included config file: {val}, ignoring')
            except OSError:
                log_error('Could not read from included config file: {}, ignoring'.format(val))
        return
    if parse_conf_item(key, val, ans):
        effective_config_lines(key, line)
    else:
        log_error(f'Ignoring unknown config key: {key}')


def _parse(
    lines: Iterable[str],
    parse_conf_item: ItemParser,
    ans: dict[str, Any],
    memory: Memory,
    accumulate_bad_lines: list[BadLine] | None = None,
    effective_config_lines: Callable[[str, str], None] | None = None,
    allow_geninclude: bool = True,
) -> None:
    name = getattr(lines, 'name', None)
    effective_config_lines = effective_config_lines or (lambda a, b: None)

View on GitHub (pinned to 6d5d0c4406)

Solutions

1. Check permissions: `ls -l <file>` and chmod/chown as needed
2. Ensure the path is a regular readable file
3. For automounted homes, ensure the mount is up before kitty starts

import os
p = os.path.expanduser(path)
assert os.path.isfile(p) and os.access(p, os.R_OK), f'unreadable include: {p}'

When it happens

Trigger: open() succeeds-or-fails with EACCES/EISDIR etc. — e.g. include of a directory, unreadable permissions, or dcache/automount hiccup.

Common situations: chmod 600 root-owned shared configs; including a directory path by mistake; network filesystems failing the read.

Related errors

• Failed to create config directory to store favorites in: %w
• Too many nested include directives while processing config f
• Empty include paths not allowed
• Could not find included config file: {val}, ignoring
• The PNG image: %s could not be opened with error: %s

AI-assisted analysis of kovidgoyal/kitty@6d5d0c4406 (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c25ea778bbe06128. Report an issue: GitHub.