redis/jedis · error · JedisException

DISCARD command failed. Received response

Error message

DISCARD command failed. Received response: ${status}

What it means

After sending DISCARD, ReliableTransaction expects the server's +OK status reply. Any other reply throws JedisException('DISCARD command failed. Received response: <status>'). This signals the server did not confirm transaction cancellation — usually because the connection state desynced or the reply was actually an error.

Solutions

Inspect the status text in the message; treat non-OK replies as connection corruption and close/reconnect the connection.
Avoid reusing pooled connections that may have unread replies; use a dedicated connection for transactions.
Retry the cleanup on a fresh connection; the transaction is server-side aborted anyway if the connection drops.

Example fix

// before
} catch (Exception e) {
  t.discard(); // may throw JedisException on desynced conn
}

// after
} catch (Exception e) {
  try {
    t.discard();
  } catch (JedisException de) {
    connection.close(); // reset state on fresh reconnect
  }
  throw e;
}

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

try {
  transaction.discard();
} catch (JedisException e) {
  // non-OK DISCARD reply: connection state is suspect
  connection.close();
}

Prevention

Close connections that return unexpected status replies instead of returning them to the pool.
Use dedicated (non-pooled) connections for transaction lifecycles.
Check for intermediaries (proxies, service mesh) rewriting transaction commands.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling discard() on a connection whose reply stream is desynced (prior unread errors), a server erroring on DISCARD (e.g. NOAUTH/ACL or proxy interference), or a mid-failover connection returning an unexpected status.

Common situations: Pooled connections with leftover replies from aborted reads; Redis proxies/meshes that rewrite MULTI/DISCARD; discarding during network degradation where error replies replace status replies.

Understand the failure class

Background: "invalid response format", "malformed payload", "missing data field": when an API returns 200 but the response shape is wrong — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of redis/jedis@6dac31d4c2 (2026-09-08). Data as JSON: /api/errors/58164909ed1e84b4. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/main/java/redis/clients/jedis/ReliableTransaction.java:208

      inMulti = false;
      inWatch = false;
      pipelinedResponses.clear();
    }
  }

  @Override
  public String discard() {
    if (!inMulti) {
      throw new IllegalStateException("DISCARD without MULTI");
    }

    try {
      // processPipelinedResponses(pipelinedResponses.size());
      // do nothing
      connection.sendCommand(DISCARD);
      String status = connection.getStatusCodeReply();
      if (!"OK".equals(status)) {
        throw new JedisException("DISCARD command failed. Received response: " + status);
      }
      return status;
    } catch (JedisConnectionException jce) {
      broken = true;
      throw jce;
    } finally {
      inMulti = false;
      inWatch = false;
      pipelinedResponses.clear();
    }
  }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 6dac31d4c2)