kubernetes/kops · error

error parsing configuration %q: %v

Error message

error parsing configuration %q: %v

What it means

After successfully reading the boot config bytes, nodeup parses them into nodeup.BootConfig with utils.YamlUnmarshal. This error means the file was fetched but is not valid YAML or does not match the BootConfig schema (e.g. wrong type for a field, truncated file, HTML error page saved instead of YAML).

Source

Thrown at upup/pkg/fi/nodeup/command.go:97

	CacheDir       string
	ConfigLocation string
	Target         string
}

// Run is responsible for perform the nodeup process
func (c *NodeUpCommand) Run(out io.Writer) error {
	ctx := context.Background()

	var bootConfig nodeup.BootConfig
	if c.ConfigLocation != "" {
		b, err := vfs.Context.ReadFile(c.ConfigLocation)
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("error loading configuration %q: %v", c.ConfigLocation, err)
		}

		err = utils.YamlUnmarshal(b, &bootConfig)
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("error parsing configuration %q: %v", c.ConfigLocation, err)
		}
	} else {
		return fmt.Errorf("ConfigLocation is required")
	}

	if c.CacheDir == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("CacheDir is required")
	}

	region, err := getRegion(ctx, &bootConfig)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}

	var configBase vfs.Path

	// If we're using a config server instead of vfs, nodeConfig will hold our configuration
	var nodeConfig *nodeup.NodeConfig

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Run the file through a YAML validator / 'yamllint' and fix syntax errors
2. Check field names and types against the nodeup.BootConfig struct for your kops version
3. Re-download or re-generate the config file (kubectl kops get cluster --cloudonly / redeploy) to rule out truncation
4. Ensure the kops version that created the config matches the nodeup binary version

Example fix

// before (nodeupconfig)
configServer:
  servers:
   - url 443
// after
configServer:
  servers:
  - url: "https://api.internal.cluster.example.com:443"

// validate the YAML parses into BootConfig before running
b, _ := os.ReadFile(localCopy)
var bc nodeup.BootConfig
if err := yaml.Unmarshal(b, &bc); err != nil {
  return fmt.Errorf("nodeup config invalid: %w", err)
}

func isValidYAML(b []byte) bool {
  var v interface{}
  return yaml.Unmarshal(b, &v) == nil
}

if err := cmd.Run(os.Stdout); err != nil {
  if strings.HasPrefix(err.Error(), "error parsing configuration") {
    klog.Errorf("nodeup config is malformed YAML or wrong schema: %v", err)
    os.Exit(1)
  }
  return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: NodeUpCommand.Run where utils.YamlUnmarshal fails on the bytes read from ConfigLocation: malformed YAML syntax, a field with the wrong type, an empty/corrupted file, or a non-config file at the path.

Common situations: Hand-edited nodeupconfig with YAML indentation errors; S3 object written truncated; a proxy/error page stored at the path; using a config format from an incompatible kops version (schema drift).

Related errors

• unsupported cloud provider for authenticator %q
• parsing path for kops-channels manifest %s: %w
• parsing kops-channels manifest: %w
• unable to parse KubernetesVersion %q: %w
• error building kubelet config: %v

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/12323c4aef70ff18. Report an issue: GitHub.