failed to parse rigid_boundaries setting, value is not a boo

Error message

failed to parse rigid_boundaries setting, value is not a boolean

What it means

loadRigidSettings expects the optional 'rigid_boundaries' config option to be a Go bool. If the key is present but holds any other type (string, number), the type assertion fails and this error is returned instead of silently coercing.

Source

Thrown at config/rigid.go:19

// Copyright © by Jeff Foley 2017-2026. All rights reserved.
// Use of this source code is governed by Apache 2 LICENSE that can be found in the LICENSE file.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

package config

import "fmt"

func (c *Config) loadRigidSettings(cfg *Config) error {
	// retrieve the rigid_boundaries option from the configuration
	rigidinterface, ok := c.Options["rigid_boundaries"]
	if !ok {
		// "rigid_boundaries" not found in options, so nothing to do here
		return nil
	}

	rigid, ok := rigidinterface.(bool)
	if !ok {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to parse rigid_boundaries setting, value is not a boolean")
	}

	c.Rigid = rigid
	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 79299dce87)

Solutions

Change the value to an unquoted boolean: rigid_boundaries: true (YAML) or "rigid_boundaries": true (JSON)
If set programmatically, pass a bool (true/false), not a string or int
Check the code that builds the options map and ensure it does not stringify config values

Example fix

// before
options["rigid_boundaries"] = "true"
// after
options["rigid_boundaries"] = true

Defensive patterns

Strategy: type-guard

Validate before calling

v, ok := options["rigid_boundaries"]; if ok { if _, isBool := v.(bool); !isBool { return fmt.Errorf("rigid_boundaries must be bool, got %T", v) } }

Type guard

func isBool(v interface{}) bool { _, ok := v.(bool); return ok }

Try / catch

if err := loadRigidSettings(); err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("config option rigid_boundaries: %w", err) }

Prevention

Never quote booleans in YAML/JSON configs
Cast types explicitly when building option maps
Schema-validate config files at startup
Watch for float64 leakage from JSON decoding

When it happens

Trigger: The config map contains "rigid_boundaries": "true" (string) or 1 (int) instead of a real boolean true/false, typically from a YAML/JSON config parsed into interface{} values or programmatic options built with the wrong type.

Common situations: Hand-edited config files quoting boolean values; generating config from templates that stringify everything; calling the settings API with untyped maps where JSON numbers become float64.

Understand the failure class

Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of owasp-amass/amass@79299dce87 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/938df29eeb500da3. Report an issue: GitHub.