redis/redis-py · error · TimeoutError

Timeout reading from {host_error}

Error message

Timeout reading from {host_error}

What it means

Raised as a TimeoutError in read_response when socket.timeout fires while reading a response from the server. Unless disconnect_on_error is False, the connection is disconnected first. It means the server did not send a complete response within socket_timeout.

Source

Thrown at redis/connection.py:1419

        """Read the response from a previously sent command"""

        host_error = self._host_error()

        try:
            if self.protocol in ["3", 3]:
                response = self._parser.read_response(
                    disable_decoding=disable_decoding,
                    push_request=push_request,
                    timeout=timeout,
                )
            else:
                response = self._parser.read_response(
                    disable_decoding=disable_decoding, timeout=timeout
                )
        except socket.timeout:
            if disconnect_on_error:
                self.disconnect()
            raise TimeoutError(f"Timeout reading from {host_error}")
        except OSError as e:
            if disconnect_on_error:
                self.disconnect()
            raise ConnectionError(f"Error while reading from {host_error} : {e.args}")
        except BaseException:
            # Also by default close in case of BaseException.  A lot of code
            # relies on this behaviour when doing Command/Response pairs.
            # See #1128.
            if disconnect_on_error:
                self.disconnect()
            raise

        if self.health_check_interval:
            self.next_health_check = time.monotonic() + self.health_check_interval

        if isinstance(response, ResponseError):
            try:
                raise response

View on GitHub (pinned to da03cdc7e8)

Solutions

1. Increase socket_timeout to exceed your longest expected command.
2. For blocking commands, pass an explicit per-call timeout to read_response so the read timeout is intentional.
3. Set retry_on_timeout=True to auto-retry idempotent commands.
4. Avoid holding connections during long server-side pauses.

Example fix

// before
r = redis.Redis(host=h, socket_timeout=1.0)
r.blpop('queue')  # blocks longer than 1s
// after
r = redis.Redis(host=h, socket_timeout=10.0)
r.blpop('queue')

from redis.exceptions import TimeoutError
try:
    val = r.get('k')
except TimeoutError as e:
    if 'reading from' in str(e):
        # only retry idempotent commands
        val = r.get('k')

When it happens

Trigger: Executing a command (or blocking command like BLPOP with no timeout, or a slow Lua script) that takes longer than socket_timeout to produce a response. read_response enforces socket_timeout on the read.

Common situations: Blocking commands (BLPOP, BRPOP, WAIT) outlasting socket_timeout; long-running EVAL scripts; server paused for persistence (BGSAVE fsync) or a DEBUG SLEEP; slow large-value responses; too-aggressive socket_timeout.

Related errors

• Timeout reading from {host_error}
• Timed out closing connection after {self.socket_connect_time
• Timeout writing to socket
• Error while reading from {host_error}: {e.args}
• Error while reading from {host_error} : {e.args}

AI-assisted analysis of redis/redis-py@da03cdc7e8 (2026-08-04). Data as JSON: /data/errors/44b2c0ff2a6232e6.json. Report an issue: GitHub.