What causes "Some specified messages do not exist: %s" in phacility/phabricator?

Confirm the ID belongs to sent (outbound) mail; use show-inbound for received mail.

phacility/phabricator · warning · PhutilArgumentUsageException

Some specified messages do not exist: %s

Error message

Some specified messages do not exist: %s

What it means

show-outbound loaded `id IN (...)` against PhabricatorMetaMTAMail (the sent-mail table) and at least one requested ID has no row; the missing IDs are enumerated. The ID passed validation, so this is purely a data-availability mismatch.

Source

Thrown at src/applications/metamta/management/PhabricatorMailManagementShowOutboundWorkflow.php:57

    foreach ($ids as $id) {
      if (!ctype_digit($id)) {
        throw new PhutilArgumentUsageException(
          pht(
            'Argument "%s" is not a valid message ID.',
            $id));
      }
    }

    $messages = id(new PhabricatorMetaMTAMail())->loadAllWhere(
      'id IN (%Ld)',
      $ids);

    if ($ids) {
      $ids = array_fuse($ids);
      $missing = array_diff_key($ids, $messages);
      if ($missing) {
        throw new PhutilArgumentUsageException(
          pht(
            'Some specified messages do not exist: %s',
            implode(', ', array_keys($missing))));
      }
    }

    $last_key = last_key($messages);
    foreach ($messages as $message_key => $message) {
      if ($args->getArg('dump-html')) {
        $html_body = $message->getHTMLBody();
        if (strlen($html_body)) {
          $template =
            "<!doctype html><html><body>{$html_body}</body></html>";
          $console->writeOut("%s\n", $html_body);
        } else {
          $console->writeErr(
            "%s\n",
            pht('(This message has no HTML body.)'));

View on GitHub (pinned to 5720a38cfe)

Solutions

Confirm the ID belongs to sent (outbound) mail; use show-inbound for received mail.
Copy a valid ID from the web UI's outbound mail list.
Verify database/environment selection if the ID should exist.

Example fix

// before
$ bin/mail show-outbound --id 123
// Exception: Some specified messages do not exist: 123

// after (123 was a received mail)
$ bin/mail show-inbound --id 123

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// Confirm the rows exist in the outbound table before invoking:
$messages = id(new PhabricatorMetaMTAMail())->loadAllWhere('id IN (%Ld)', $ids);
$missing = array_diff($ids, mpull($messages, 'getID'));
if ($missing) {
  fwrite(STDERR, 'No such outbound mail: '.implode(', ', $missing)."\n");
  exit(1);
}

Prevention

Do not reuse IDs between show-inbound and show-outbound.
Pre-check existence in wrapper scripts.
Confirm the environment/database when an ID should exist.

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a received-mail ID to show-outbound; the outbound mail was deleted or the table pruned; wrong environment/database; plain typo.

Common situations: Mixing up inbound and outbound ID spaces; IDs copied from stale logs or another install; archived databases.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of phacility/phabricator@5720a38cfe (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/be144d28c743b640. Report an issue: GitHub.