pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · KettleException

Unsupported character encoding:

Error message

Unsupported character encoding: 

What it means

encodeRecordTerminator converts the configured record terminator string to bytes in the configured character encoding and renders it as hex for the SQL*Loader control file. If the JVM does not support the configured encoding, UnsupportedEncodingException is caught and rethrown as 'Unsupported character encoding: <encoding>'.

Solutions

1. Use a standard IANA encoding name such as UTF-8, ISO-8859-1 or US-ASCII in the loader's encoding setting
2. Check the JVM's supported encodings (Charset.availableCharsets()) and pick one of those
3. Fix the typo in the configured encoding value

Example fix

// before
meta.setEncoding( "utf_8" );
// after
meta.setEncoding( "UTF-8" );

if ( !Charset.isSupported( encoding ) ) {
  throw new KettleException( "Unsupported encoding: " + encoding );
}

try {
  controlFile = OraBulkLoaderMeta.getControlFileContents( meta, transMeta, prev );
} catch ( KettleException e ) {
  if ( e.getMessage().startsWith( "Unsupported character encoding" ) ) {
    logError( "Fix encoding setting: " + e.getMessage() );
  }
}

When it happens

Trigger: getControlFileContents calls encodeRecordTerminator with an encoding string not recognized by the JVM (Charset.forName/new String equivalent lookup fails).

Common situations: Typo in the encoding setting (e.g. 'utf8' vs 'UTF-8', 'UTF_8'); encoding copied from a different platform; running on a JVM with a reduced charset provider (compact profiles).

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid value" and "allowed values are" config errors: what your library rejected and how to fix it — this error's family across 41 libraries.

Related errors

• ConcatFields.Error.UnsupportedEncoding
• e.getMessage()
• Error retrieving sqlldr string
• Error while closing output
• Error while executing sqlldr ''

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c0c1297356abc6cc. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at plugins/oracle-bulk-loader/impl/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/orabulkloader/OraBulkLoader.java:177

    try {
      // use terminator in hex representation due to character set
      // terminator in hex representation must be in character set
      // of data file
      if ( Utils.isEmpty( encoding ) ) {
        bytes = in.getBytes();
      } else {
        bytes = in.getBytes( encoding );
      }
      for ( byte aByte : bytes ) {
        final String hex = Integer.toHexString( aByte );

        if ( hex.length() == 1 ) {
          out.append( '0' );
        }
        out.append( hex );
      }
    } catch ( UnsupportedEncodingException e ) {
      throw new KettleException( "Unsupported character encoding: " + encoding, e );
    }

    return out.toString();
  }

  /**
   * Get the contents of the control file as specified in the meta object
   *
   * @param meta
   *          the meta object to model the control file after
   *
   * @return a string containing the control file contents
   */
  public String getControlFileContents( OraBulkLoaderMeta meta, RowMetaInterface rm, Object[] r ) throws KettleException {
    DatabaseMeta dm = meta.getDatabaseMeta();
    String inputName = "'" + getFilename( getFileObject( meta.getDataFile(), getTransMeta() ) ) + "'";

    String loadAction = meta.getLoadAction();

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