projectdiscovery/nuclei · error

ipv4 and/or ipv6 must be selected

Error message

ipv4 and/or ipv6 must be selected

What it means

The file protocol streams each matched archive member into a temp file (os.CreateTemp) and its deferred cleanup panics if Close fails. A close error after a successful create is abnormal and usually environmental - ENOSPC, NFS I/O errors, or a double close - so nuclei panics rather than silently risk truncated data being matched.

Source

Thrown at internal/runner/options.go:230

	// verify that a valid ip version type was selected (4, 6)
	if len(options.IPVersion) == 0 {
		// add ipv4 as default
		options.IPVersion = append(options.IPVersion, "4")
	}
	var useIPV4, useIPV6 bool
	for _, ipv := range options.IPVersion {
		switch ipv {
		case "4":
			useIPV4 = true
		case "6":
			useIPV6 = true
		default:
			return fmt.Errorf("unsupported ip version: %s", ipv)
		}
	}
	if !useIPV4 && !useIPV6 {
		return errors.New("ipv4 and/or ipv6 must be selected")
	}
	return nil
}

func validateMissingS3Options(options *types.Options) []string {
	var missing []string
	if options.AwsBucketName == "" {
		missing = append(missing, "AWS_TEMPLATE_BUCKET")
	}
	if options.AwsProfile == "" {
		var missingCreds []string
		if options.AwsAccessKey == "" {
			missingCreds = append(missingCreds, "AWS_ACCESS_KEY")
		}
		if options.AwsSecretKey == "" {
			missingCreds = append(missingCreds, "AWS_SECRET_KEY")
		}
		if options.AwsRegion == "" {

View on GitHub (pinned to 265b3a3dec)

Solutions

1. Free space or point TMPDIR to a larger local volume (export TMPDIR=/data/tmp) and rerun
2. Narrow the scan to the failing target to confirm, then exclude that archive via -exclude or file filters
3. If it recurs on healthy local disks, capture the panic details and report it upstream

Example fix

# before
TMPDIR=/tmp nuclei -t file.yaml -l files.txt   # /tmp fills up
# after
mkdir -p /data/tmp && TMPDIR=/data/tmp nuclei -t file.yaml -l files.txt

defer func() {
    if r := recover(); r != nil {
        // temp-file cleanup panic (close failure): log and continue with next target
        log.Printf("file protocol cleanup panic: %v", r)
    }
}()
err := engine.ExecuteWithResults(target, ...)
if err != nil {
    log.Printf("execute failed: %v", err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Scanning archives (zip/tar) when TMPDIR fills mid-copy, or TMPDIR lives on a network filesystem that returns I/O errors on close.

Common situations: Long archive-heavy scans exhausting /tmp; containers with small ephemeral disks; TMPDIR pointed at NFS.

Related errors

• encountered errors while performing template validation
• no templates provided for scan
• could not read profile file: %w
• could not create temp directory: %w
• could not create temp secrets file: %w

AI-assisted analysis of projectdiscovery/nuclei@265b3a3dec (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9d5f73c44bb725ba. Report an issue: GitHub.