risingwavelabs/risingwave · error · StorageError

Serialize/deserialize error: {0}

Error message

Serialize/deserialize error: {0}

What it means

A StorageError variant wrapping memcomparable::Error. It occurs during serialization or deserialization of rows in memcomparable format, used for encoding keys/rows to store order-preservingly in the state store.

Source

Thrown at src/storage/src/error.rs:38

#[derive(Error, thiserror_ext::ReportDebug, thiserror_ext::Box)]
#[thiserror_ext(newtype(name = StorageError, backtrace))]
pub enum ErrorKind {
    #[error("Hummock error: {0}")]
    Hummock(
        #[backtrace]
        #[from]
        HummockError,
    ),

    #[error("Deserialize row error: {0}")]
    DeserializeRow(
        #[from]
        #[backtrace]
        ValueEncodingError,
    ),

    #[error("Serialize/deserialize error: {0}")]
    SerdeError(
        #[from]
        #[backtrace]
        memcomparable::Error,
    ),

    #[error("Sled error: {0}")]
    Sled(
        #[backtrace]
        #[from]
        sled::Error,
    ),

    #[error("MemTable error: {0}")]
    MemTable(
        #[backtrace]
        #[from]
        Box<MemTableError>,

View on GitHub (pinned to 6469eb736d)

Solutions

1. Verify the schema used to serialize matches the schema used to deserialize (column count and types)
2. Re-run the operation against data written by the same RisingWave version; migrate data if versions differ
3. Inspect the inner memcomparable error message to pinpoint which datum failed

match write_row(&row).await {
    Err(e) if matches!(e.kind(), StorageErrorKind::SerdeError(_)) => {
        // schema mismatch: verify datum types/column count before retrying
    }
    other => other,
}

When it happens

Trigger: Serializing a row whose datum types mismatch the schema (e.g. wrong number of columns, incompatible datum type), or deserializing a memcomparable buffer written with a different schema/version.

Common situations: Schema mismatch between frontend plan and storage encoder, buggy ad-hoc tools reading raw state-store keys, data written by an incompatible RisingWave version.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to unmarshal" / json.Unmarshal errors: why parsing a response into a Go struct fails and how to fix it — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

• Magic number mismatch: expected {expected}, found: {found}
• iceberg sink metadata should have schema_id
• iceberg sink metadata should have partition_spec_id
• iceberg sink metadata should have data_files object
• (dataset guard acquisition error)

AI-assisted analysis of risingwavelabs/risingwave@6469eb736d (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/51af38bd88fa2bab. Report an issue: GitHub.