What causes "Could not close line number file " in pentaho/pentaho-kettle?

Check the wrapped IOException cause; often secondary to the primary read error

pentaho/pentaho-kettle · warning · KettleException

Could not close line number file

Error message

Could not close line number file

What it means

After reading, initialize() tries to close the reader in a finally block; an IOException from close() is wrapped in this KettleException. This is a cleanup failure, typically indicating an underlying stream/filesystem problem.

Solutions

Check the wrapped IOException cause; often secondary to the primary read error
Verify the file is on a healthy, writable/readable filesystem
Retry the operation after fixing the read error
Consider closing via try-with-resources to surface the original exception

Example fix

// before
// manual finally-close wraps close() IOException
// after
try (BufferedReader reader = ...) { /* read */ } // close errors handled by resource mgmt

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

try {
  playList = new FilePlayListReplayLineNumberFile(file, lineNumberFile, charset);
} catch (KettleException e) {
  if (e.getMessage().startsWith("Could not close line number file")) {
    log.warn("Non-fatal close failure on line-number file", e.getCause());
  } else throw e;
}

Prevention

Treat close failures as symptoms of an earlier I/O problem and fix the root cause
Run on healthy local filesystems rather than flaky network mounts for replay files
Keep the KettleVFS cache clean to avoid stale handles

When it happens

Trigger: reader.close() throws IOException while releasing the line-number file handle, e.g. underlying VFS stream already broken or OS-level I/O error.

Common situations: VFS file handle already invalidated; disk/permission issue during close; reading exception earlier left the stream in a bad state.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to read file", EACCES, ENOENT and "could not read <path>" errors: when a program can't read a file from disk — this error's family across 49 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d4cb04651b053073. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at engine/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/core/playlist/FilePlayListReplayLineNumberFile.java:58

        reader = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( KettleVFS.getInputStream( lineNumberFile ) ) );
      } else {
        reader =
          new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( KettleVFS.getInputStream( lineNumberFile ), encoding ) );
      }
      String line = null;
      while ( ( line = reader.readLine() ) != null ) {
        if ( line.length() > 0 ) {
          lineNumbers.add( Long.valueOf( line ) );
        }
      }
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new KettleException( "Could not read line number file " + lineNumberFile.getName().getURI(), e );
    } finally {
      if ( reader != null ) {
        try {
          reader.close();
        } catch ( IOException e ) {
          throw new KettleException( "Could not close line number file " + lineNumberFile.getName().getURI(), e );
        }
      }
    }
  }

  public boolean isProcessingNeeded( FileObject file, long lineNr, String filePart ) throws KettleException {
    return lineNumbers.contains( new Long( lineNr ) );
  }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to f3058517a1)