risingwavelabs/risingwave · error

source validation failed

Error message

source validation failed

What it means

During CDC source validation, RisingWave invokes the Java (Debezium) connector via JNI and decodes a ValidateSourceResponse. If the response carries an error field, the inner error_message is wrapped with the context 'source validation failed', meaning the external connector rejected the source configuration (bad broker address, credentials, topic, table, etc.).

Source

Thrown at src/connector/src/source/cdc/enumerator/mod.rs:144

                };

                let validate_source_request_bytes =
                    env.byte_array_from_slice(&Message::encode_to_vec(&validate_source_request))?;

                let validate_source_response_bytes = call_static_method!(
                    env,
                    {com.risingwave.connector.source.JniSourceValidateHandler},
                    {byte[] validate(byte[] validateSourceRequestBytes)},
                    &validate_source_request_bytes
                )?;

                let validate_source_response: ValidateSourceResponse = Message::decode(
                    risingwave_jni_core::to_guarded_slice(&validate_source_response_bytes, env)?
                        .deref(),
                )?;

                if let Some(error) = validate_source_response.error {
                    return Err(anyhow!(error.error_message).context("source validation failed"));
                }

                Ok(())
            })
        })
        .await
        .context("failed to validate source")??;

        tracing::debug!("validate cdc source properties success");
        Ok(Self {
            source_id,
            worker_node_addrs: server_addrs,
            metrics: context.metrics.clone(),
            pg_cdc_upstream_max_lsn: None,
            pg_cdc_confirmed_flush_lsn: None,
            mysql_cdc_binlog_file_seq_min: None,
            mysql_cdc_binlog_file_seq_max: None,
            sqlserver_cdc_upstream_min_lsn: None,

View on GitHub (pinned to 6469eb736d)

Solutions

1. Read the inner error_message (shown below the context) and fix the Debezium config it points at (hostname, port, user, password, database, table)
2. Verify the upstream database is reachable from RisingWave (network/firewall/DNS)
3. Confirm the CDC user has required privileges (e.g. REPLICATION for Postgres)
4. Fix or remove invalid options in the WITH clause and retry CREATE SOURCE

Example fix

// before
WITH (connector='cdc', hostname='db.internal', port='5433', ...)
// after
WITH (connector='cdc', hostname='db.internal', port='5432', username='rw', password='***', ...)

// pre-check upstream DB before CREATE SOURCE ... CONNECTOR TYPE CDC
let client = tokio_postgres::connect(&pg_config, NoTls).await?; // verifies host/port/credentials

match create_source_result {
    Err(e) if e.root_cause().to_string() != "source validation failed" => return Err(e),
    Err(e) => {
        // surface the nested Debezium error_message to the user
        tracing::error!("CDC validation: {}", e);
        Err(e)
    }
    ok => ok,
}

When it happens

Trigger: CREATE SOURCE ... CONNECTOR TYPE CDC (JDBC/Postgres/MySQL/SQL Server) where the Debezium-side validation returns error — unreachable database, wrong hostname/port/user/password, missing table, or unsupported connector config; raised in CdcSplitEnumerator::new validation path.

Common situations: Wrong JDBC connection parameters; database firewall blocking access; user lacks replication privileges; typos in CDC config options.

Understand the failure class

Background: Schema validation failed / invalid input schema: payload rejected because its shape doesn't match the expected schema — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

• invalid backfill_num_rows_per_split, must be greater than 0
• The database name '{}' in FROM clause does not match the dat
• PostgreSQL schema `{schema}` does not exist
• PostgreSQL table `{schema}`.`{table}` does not exist
• PostgreSQL table {} exists, but the connection user `{}` doe

AI-assisted analysis of risingwavelabs/risingwave@6469eb736d (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/31cb1b4b087558d4. Report an issue: GitHub.