kubernetes/kops · error

error rendering failures table: %v

Error message

error rendering failures table: %v

What it means

Thrown by validateClusterOutputTable when rendering the VALIDATION ERRORS table fails. This is the failures section shown only when result.Failures is non-empty (cluster validation found problems), so this error indicates an output-writing problem layered on top of an unhealthy cluster.

Source

Thrown at cmd/kops/validate_cluster.go:317

			return fmt.Errorf("cannot render nodes for %q: %v", cluster.Name, err)
		}
	}

	if len(result.Failures) != 0 {
		failuresTable := &tables.Table{}
		failuresTable.AddColumn("KIND", func(e *validation.ValidationError) string {
			return e.Kind
		})
		failuresTable.AddColumn("NAME", func(e *validation.ValidationError) string {
			return e.Name
		})
		failuresTable.AddColumn("MESSAGE", func(e *validation.ValidationError) string {
			return e.Message
		})

		fmt.Fprintln(out, "\nVALIDATION ERRORS")
		if err := failuresTable.Render(result.Failures, out, "KIND", "NAME", "MESSAGE"); err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("error rendering failures table: %v", err)
		}

		fmt.Fprintf(out, "\nValidation Failed\n")
	} else {
		fmt.Fprintf(out, "\nYour cluster %s is ready\n", cluster.Name)
	}

	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Write output to a file instead of a pipe: `kops validate cluster > validation.txt`.
2. Free disk space or fix permissions on the output target.
3. Use `--output json` to get failures without table rendering.
4. Fix the underlying cluster failures listed before the render error.

Example fix

// before
kops validate cluster | tee validation.log
// after (avoid SIGPIPE killing the writer)
kops validate cluster > validation.log 2>&1; cat validation.log

// Go: fall back to JSON when failure-table rendering breaks
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "error rendering failures table") {
    return json.NewEncoder(fileOut).Encode(result.Failures)
}

When it happens

Trigger: `kops validate cluster` with validation failures present, where failuresTable.Render(result.Failures, out, ...) returns an error while writing the KIND/NAME/MESSAGE table.

Common situations: Broken pipe to a short-lived consumer (`| head`), full disk, unwritable redirect target while diagnosing an already-failing cluster.

Related errors

• cannot render instance groups for %q: %w
• cannot render nodes for %q: %v
• must specify %q label with cluster name to create instanceGr
• error querying cluster %q: %v
• cluster %q not found

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e27fb8ccb486442f. Report an issue: GitHub.