santifer/career-ops · error · Error

refusing to hash non-regular file

Error message

refusing to hash non-regular file: ${childRel}

What it means

hashPluginTree only knows how to hash directories (recursed) and regular files (sha256 of contents). Any other filesystem entry type — FIFOs, sockets, device files, and other specials — causes this throw. It prevents the hasher from blocking forever on a FIFO read or producing nondeterministic hashes from special files, keeping the integrity manifest well-defined.

Solutions

  1. Identify the entry from the message (`find <plugins-dir> ! -type f ! -type d`) and delete it if it is transient (socket/FIFO left by a process).
  2. Stop the process that creates the special file inside the plugin tree, or move its working directory elsewhere.
  3. Re-install the plugin from a clean source if the archive itself contains special files.
  4. Re-run hashing after the tree contains only regular files and directories.

Example fix

// before: stale socket in plugin dir aborts hashing
$ ls plugins/myplugin/
server.sock  index.mjs

// after: remove non-regular entries, keep only real files
$ rm plugins/myplugin/server.sock
$ find plugins/myplugin ! -type f ! -type d -delete
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

import { readdirSync, lstatSync } from 'fs';
import path from 'path';
function findSpecialFiles(dir, rel = '') {
  const out = [];
  for (const e of readdirSync(dir, { withFileTypes: true })) {
    if (e.name === 'node_modules' || e.name === '.git') continue;
    const childRel = rel ? `${rel}/${e.name}` : e.name;
    const st = lstatSync(path.join(dir, e.name));
    if (!st.isDirectory() && !st.isFile()) out.push(childRel);
    else if (st.isDirectory()) out.push(...findSpecialFiles(path.join(dir, e.name), childRel));
  }
  return out;
}
// before calling: findSpecialFiles(pluginDir).length === 0

Try / catch

try {
  hashPluginTree(pluginDir);
} catch (err) {
  if (err.message.startsWith('refusing to hash non-regular file: ')) {
    console.error(`Remove the FIFO/socket/device entry: ${err.message}`);
  }
  throw err;
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Calling hashPluginTree(dir) when the tree contains a named pipe, Unix socket, device node, or similar non-regular/non-directory entry created accidentally (e.g. a process wrote its socket into the plugin dir) or maliciously (a crafted plugin archive).

Common situations: A dev server left a .sock file inside the plugin folder; a test created a FIFO in the plugin directory; extracting a malicious or malformed plugin tarball containing device nodes; a docker bind-mount surfacing odd node types.

Understand the failure class

Background: UnsupportedOperationException and "is not supported" errors: when a library deliberately refuses a call — this error's family across 30 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of santifer/career-ops@aac998c7ed (2026-09-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e6ae1db4bc7c7e5e. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at plugins/_lock.mjs:52

 * @param {string} dir absolute plugin directory
 * @returns {{ files: Record<string,string>, integrity: string }}
 */
export function hashPluginTree(dir) {
  const files = {};
  const walk = (abs, rel) => {
    let entries;
    try { entries = readdirSync(abs, { withFileTypes: true }); }
    catch (err) { throw new Error(`cannot read ${rel || '.'}: ${err.message}`); }
    for (const e of entries.sort((a, b) => a.name.localeCompare(b.name))) {
      if (e.name === 'node_modules' || e.name === '.git') continue;
      const childAbs = path.join(abs, e.name);
      const childRel = rel ? `${rel}/${e.name}` : e.name;
      // lstat (not stat) so a symlink is detected, never followed.
      const st = lstatSync(childAbs);
      if (st.isSymbolicLink()) throw new Error(`refusing to hash symlink: ${childRel}`);
      if (st.isDirectory()) walk(childAbs, childRel);
      else if (st.isFile()) files[childRel] = sha256(readFileSync(childAbs));
      else throw new Error(`refusing to hash non-regular file: ${childRel}`);
    }
  };
  walk(dir, '');
  // Aggregate integrity = sha256 over the deterministic sorted "rel:hash" join.
  const aggregate = Object.keys(files).sort().map(k => `${k}:${files[k]}`).join('\n');
  return { files, integrity: sha256(Buffer.from(aggregate)) };
}

/** Read plugins.lock (fail-open to an empty lock — like the rest of the engine). */
export function readLock(root) {
  const file = lockPath(root);
  if (!existsSync(file)) return { lockfileVersion: LOCK_VERSION, plugins: {} };
  try {
    const parsed = JSON.parse(readFileSync(file, 'utf8'));
    if (!parsed || typeof parsed !== 'object' || typeof parsed.plugins !== 'object') return { lockfileVersion: LOCK_VERSION, plugins: {} };
    return parsed;
  } catch {
    return { lockfileVersion: LOCK_VERSION, plugins: {} };

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