kubernetes/kops · error

error creating secret %q: %v

Error message

error creating secret %q: %v

What it means

The secret fitask's Render calls fi.CreateSecret() to generate a new random secret material (key+value). If generating that in-memory secret fails, the task wraps and returns the underlying error. This almost never fails in practice; it indicates a crypto/rand read failure in the environment.

Source

Thrown at upup/pkg/fi/fitasks/secret.go:89

			return fi.CannotChangeField("Name")
		}
	}
	return nil
}

func (_ *Secret) Render(c *fi.CloudupContext, a, e, changes *Secret) error {
	ctx := c.Context()

	name := fi.ValueOf(e.Name)
	if name == "" {
		return fi.RequiredField("Name")
	}

	secrets := c.T.SecretStore

	secret, err := fi.CreateSecret()
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error creating secret %q: %v", name, err)
	}

	_, _, err = secrets.GetOrCreateSecret(ctx, name, secret)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error creating secret %q: %v", name, err)
	}

	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Inspect the wrapped %v error to identify the underlying crypto/rand failure
2. Ensure the host/container has a working entropy source (/dev/urandom available and readable)
3. Re-run the kops apply/render after fixing the environment

// Go: ensure crypto/rand works in your environment before provisioning
if _, err := rand.Read(make([]byte, 32)); err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("entropy source unavailable: %w", err)
}

if err := task.Render(ctx, a, b, c); err != nil {
    var wrapped *fmt.WrapError // or inspect via errors.Unwrap
    log.Printf("secret creation failed: %v", err)
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: fi.CreateSecret() returns a non-nil error during Render of the Secret task (e.g. entropy source failure from crypto/rand).

Common situations: Running on a system where the random source is unavailable or blocked (unusual container/virtualized environments lacking entropy); OS-level crypto/rand errors.

Related errors

• generating ecdsa key: %w
• error getting random data: %w
• error generating RSA private key: %v
• error loading secret %q: %w
• cannot parse SecretStore %q: %w

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a0c09c5eab8f31fb. Report an issue: GitHub.