What causes "throw new KettleException( e );" in pentaho/pentaho-kettle?

Check file encoding/charset configuration matches the file.

pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · KettleException

throw new KettleException( e );

Error message

throw new KettleException( e );

What it means

GetFilesRowsCount.getRowNumber() wraps any exception raised while scanning the currently open file to count its rows into a bare KettleException. The file is closed in the finally block, so the error means row counting for data.file failed before reaching the reported rownr.

Solutions

Check file encoding/charset configuration matches the file.
Verify the separator and row-count field settings align with file content.
Ensure the file is readable by the user running the transformation.
Inspect the wrapped cause (e) for the exact IO/parse failure.

Example fix

// before
reader = new InputStreamReader(input); // platform default charset
// after
reader = new InputStreamReader(input, Charset.forName(meta.getEncoding() != null ? meta.getEncoding() : "UTF-8"));

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

if (meta.getEncoding() != null && !Charset.isSupported(meta.getEncoding())) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unsupported encoding: " + meta.getEncoding());

Try / catch

try { count = getRowNumber(...); } catch (KettleException e) { log.error("Row counting failed for file: " + data.file, e.getCause()); } finally { /* file is closed by the step */ }

Prevention

Set the correct charset for each file
Ensure the separator matches the file layout
Check file permissions for the runtime user
Test on a small sample file first

When it happens

Trigger: Called from openNextFile when reading the file via data.fr throws: IO error, charset decoding failure, or the configured row-count field cannot be parsed from the line.

Common situations: Binary or wrongly-encoded files opened as text; permission changes mid-read; huge files hitting IO errors; count field format mismatch with the file's separator settings.

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/c3ce122b04405f08. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at engine/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/getfilesrowscount/GetFilesRowsCount.java:170

                prevCR = false;
              }

            } else {
              if ( buf[i] == data.separator ) {
                data.rownr++;
                // Maybe we won't have data after
                data.foundData = false;
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      if ( isDetailed() ) {
        logDetailed( BaseMessages.getString( PKG, "GetFilesRowsCount.Log.RowsInFile", data.file.toString(), ""
          + data.rownr ) );
      }
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new KettleException( e );
    } finally {
      // Close inputstream - not used except for counting
      if ( data.fr != null ) {
        BaseStep.closeQuietly( data.fr );
        data.fr = null;
      }
    }

  }

  private boolean openNextFile() {
    if ( data.last_file ) {
      return false; // Done!
    }

    try {
      if ( !meta.isFileField() ) {
        if ( data.filenr >= data.files.nrOfFiles() ) {

View on GitHub (pinned to f3058517a1)