mudler/LocalAI · error

ds4-worker: invalid value for %s: %s

Error message

ds4-worker: invalid value for %s: %s

What it means

CLI validation in the ds4 worker's parse_int_arg(): the value string for a numeric flag (-c/--ctx, -t/--threads, or a distributed numeric option) is rejected when it is empty, contains non-digit trailing characters, or parses to a value <= 0 or > INT_MAX. The worker exits with status 2 before touching the model.

Source

Thrown at backend/cpp/ds4/worker_main.c:35

#include <signal.h>
#include <limits.h>

#include "ds4.h"
#include "ds4_distributed.h"

static const char *need_arg(int *i, int argc, char **argv, const char *flag) {
    if (*i + 1 >= argc) {
        fprintf(stderr, "ds4-worker: missing value for %s\n", flag);
        exit(2);
    }
    return argv[++(*i)];
}

static int parse_int_arg(const char *s, const char *flag) {
    char *end = NULL;
    long v = strtol(s, &end, 10);
    if (!s[0] || *end || v <= 0 || v > INT_MAX) {
        fprintf(stderr, "ds4-worker: invalid value for %s: %s\n", flag, s);
        exit(2);
    }
    return (int)v;
}

static ds4_backend default_backend(void) {
#if defined(DS4_NO_GPU)
    return DS4_BACKEND_CPU;
#elif defined(__APPLE__)
    return DS4_BACKEND_METAL;
#else
    return DS4_BACKEND_CUDA;
#endif
}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);

View on GitHub (pinned to 44413a9d06)

Solutions

1. Supply a plain positive decimal integer within int range: '--ctx 32768', '--threads 8'.
2. Strip units in generating scripts: use $(( ... )) arithmetic or 'numfmt --from=iec' to precompute the raw number.
3. Echo the assembled command line in your launcher before exec so a bad substitution is visible.

Example fix

# before
ds4-worker --role worker -m model.gguf --ctx 8k -t 0

# after
ds4-worker --role worker -m model.gguf --ctx 8192 -t 8

# bash: pre-validate every numeric arg
is_pos_int() { case "$1" in ''|*[!0-9]*) return 1;; esac; [ "$1" -gt 0 ] && [ "$1" -le 2147483647 ]; }
for v in "$CTX" "$THREADS"; do is_pos_int "$v" || { echo "bad numeric value: $v" >&2; exit 2; }; done

bool valid_ds4_int(const char *s) {
    char *end; long v = strtol(s, &end, 10);
    return s[0] && !*end && v > 0 && v <= INT_MAX;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing 'ds4-worker -c 0', '-c -1', '-c 32k', '-t abc', or a value above 2147483647; strtol sets end and the check !s[0] || *end || v <= 0 || v > INT_MAX fires.

Common situations: Using KB/MB-style suffixes ('--ctx 8k') where a plain integer is required; environment variables expanding to empty strings; negative or zero values from miscomputed scripts; 64-bit counts overflowing INT_MAX.

Related errors

• ds4-worker: missing value for %s
• ds4-worker: %s
• ds4-worker: unknown option: %s
• ds4-worker: --role worker is required
• ds4-worker: --model is required

AI-assisted analysis of mudler/LocalAI@44413a9d06 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2dfc8f07d7604fde. Report an issue: GitHub.