risingwavelabs/risingwave · error · BackupError

Encoding error: {0}

Error message

Encoding error: {0}

What it means

`BackupError::Encoding` wraps an underlying error raised when serializing/encoding backup payload data (e.g. protobuf/bytes conversion) fails. The original encoder error is boxed and kept as source with backtrace.

Source

Thrown at src/storage/backup/src/error.rs:40

    #[error("BackupStorage error: {0}")]
    BackupStorage(
        #[backtrace]
        #[source]
        BoxedError,
    ),
    #[error("MetaStorage error: {0}")]
    MetaStorage(
        #[backtrace]
        #[source]
        BoxedError,
    ),
    #[error("StateStorage error: {0}")]
    StateStorage(
        #[backtrace]
        #[source]
        BoxedError,
    ),
    #[error("Encoding error: {0}")]
    Encoding(
        #[backtrace]
        #[source]
        BoxedError,
    ),
    #[error("Decoding error: {0}")]
    Decoding(
        #[backtrace]
        #[source]
        BoxedError,
    ),
    #[error("Checksum mismatch: expected {expected}, found: {found}")]
    ChecksumMismatch { expected: u64, found: u64 },
    #[error("Meta storage is not empty before being restored")]
    NonemptyMetaStorage,
    #[error(transparent)]
    Other(
        #[from]

View on GitHub (pinned to 6469eb736d)

Solutions

1. Inspect the wrapped source to see which encoder failed and on what payload.
2. Ensure meta/backup binaries and stored metadata versions are compatible (upgrade/downgrade consistency).
3. Retry the backup; if reproducible, report with the backtrace as it may indicate a bug.

// Sanity-check payload before encode
fn payload_sane<T: prost::Message>(m: &T) -> bool {
    m.encoded_len() > 0
}

match backup.write().await {
    Err(e @ BackupError::Encoding(_)) => {
        tracing::error!(source = ?e.source(), "encode failure");
        // check version compatibility, abort rather than retry blindly
    }
    other => other?,
}

When it happens

Trigger: Encoding a backup manifest, snapshot metadata, or data chunk before writing to backup storage when the serializer returns an error (e.g. prost encode failure, invalid utf-8, buffer conversion errors).

Common situations: Incompatible payload produced by a newer/older version of the code; corrupted in-memory structures; OOM/truncation during large payload encoding.

Understand the failure class

Background: json.Marshal / "failed to marshal" errors in Go: why "unsupported type" happens and how to fix it — this error's family across 22 libraries.

Related errors

• Decoding error: {0}
• metadata JSON payload length exceeds usize
• metadata snapshot is truncated while reading u64
• metadata JSON payload length {} exceeds remaining buffer {}
• iceberg sink metadata should have schema_id

AI-assisted analysis of risingwavelabs/risingwave@6469eb736d (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d56d50c7a7b1a1be. Report an issue: GitHub.