kubernetes/kops · error

failed to read metadata information %s: %v

Error message

failed to read metadata information %s: %v

What it means

After a successful 200 response from the droplet metadata service, getMetadata reads the response body with io.ReadAll. This error is returned if streaming the body fails (connection reset mid-read, timeout, truncated response).

Source

Thrown at pkg/nodeidentity/do/identify.go:112

	oauthClient := oauth2.NewClient(context.TODO(), tokenSource)
	return godo.NewClient(oauthClient), nil
}

func getMetadata(url string) (string, error) {
	resp, err := http.Get(url)
	if err != nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("failed to get metadata URL %s: %v", url, err)
	}

	defer resp.Body.Close()

	if resp.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("droplet metadata returned non-200 status code: %d", resp.StatusCode)
	}

	bodyBytes, err := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
	if err != nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("failed to read metadata information %s: %v", url, err)
	}

	return string(bodyBytes), nil
}

// IdentifyNode queries DigitalOcean for the node identity information.
func (i *nodeIdentifier) IdentifyNode(ctx context.Context, node *corev1.Node) (*nodeidentity.Info, error) {
	providerID := node.Spec.ProviderID
	if providerID == "" {
		return nil, errors.New("provider ID cannot be empty")
	}

	const prefix = "digitalocean://"
	if !strings.HasPrefix(providerID, prefix) {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("provider ID %q is missing prefix %q", providerID, prefix)
	}

	instanceID := strings.TrimPrefix(providerID, prefix)

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Retry the metadata request; this is usually transient
2. Check droplet network health (link-local 169.254.169.254 reachability, MTU settings)
3. Verify no proxy or firewall is cutting off the response mid-transfer
4. If persistent, check DigitalOcean status page for metadata service incidents

meta, err := getMetadata(url)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "failed to read metadata") {
        // transient IO error: retry with backoff
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: io.ReadAll(resp.Body) returns an error when reading the 200 response from the droplet metadata endpoint — typically a dropped connection, read timeout, or malformed/chunked transfer abort.

Common situations: Flaky networking inside the droplet; metadata service under load closing connections; MTU/link-local issues truncating the response; container networking edge cases.

Related errors

• droplet metadata returned non-200 status code: %d
• failed to load AWS config: %w
• failed to get local-ipv4 address from ec2 metadata: %w
• error querying DigitalOcean droplet ID: %w
• reading primary MAC address from ec2 metadata: %w

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fabd458bcdc32ab6. Report an issue: GitHub.