stamparm/maltrail · error

unsupported type

Error message

unsupported type '%s'

What it means

Validation guard in TrailsDict.__setitem__: the value assigned to a key must be a tuple or list (a trail of hop pairs); any other type — a plain string, int, dict, None, etc. — is rejected. This is a sentinel-style generic Exception used to enforce the container's value contract before the value is normalized into the internal pair/value storage. Fix by passing the trail as a tuple/list of pairs, e.g. td[key] = (('1.2.3.4', '5.6.7.8'), ...), or by wrapping scalars in the structure the API expects.

Solutions

1. Wrap the value in a tuple, e.g. trails[key] = (interval, "malware")
2. Ensure loaders convert each row to a tuple/list before assignment
3. Add an isinstance check on values before writing
4. Catch Exception in the update loop and log the offending type

Example fix

// before
trails[key] = value  # value is a str from CSV
// after
interval, name = value.split(",")
trails[key] = (int(interval), name)

def trails_value_ok(value):
    return isinstance(value, (tuple, list)) and len(value) >= 2

def is_trail_pair(value):
    return isinstance(value, (tuple, list)) and len(value) >= 2

try:
    trails[key] = value
except Exception as e:
    if "unsupported type" in str(e):
        trails[key] = tuple(value) if isinstance(value, (list, tuple)) else (value, "")

When it happens

Trigger: trails[key] = "some string"; assigning None, an int, or a dict; passing a generator/iterator instead of a materialized pair; refactoring changed value shape from tuple to custom object.

Common situations: Typos or refactors in update scripts, JSON/CSV loaders yielding strings, code adapted from a different trails structure.

Understand the failure class

Background: Type mismatch errors: IllegalArgumentException, TypeError and type guards across 150 open-source libraries — this error's family across 150 libraries.

Related errors

• [x] invalid IP address
• not a Maltrail provenance sidecar (bad magic)
• provenance sidecar is truncated
• packet too short for header-protection sample
• trail bin too small

AI-assisted analysis of stamparm/maltrail@77cfb06d76 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5b0fdd5bf1c29e12. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at core/trailsdict.py:272

                return pair_list[values[i]]
            i += 1
        return default

    def __len__(self):
        mm = self._mmap
        if mm is not None:
            return mm["length"]
        frozen = self._frozen
        return frozen[5] if frozen is not None else len(self._trails)

    def clear(self):
        self.__init__()

    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        if self._frozen is not None or self._mmap is not None:
            raise Exception("cannot modify a finalized TrailsDict")
        if not isinstance(value, (tuple, list)):
            raise Exception("unsupported type '%s'" % type(value))

        pair = (value[0], value[1])
        shared = self._pairs.get(pair)
        if shared is None:
            shared = pair
            self._pairs[pair] = pair
        self._trails[key] = shared

    def __delitem__(self, key):
        if self._frozen is not None or self._mmap is not None:
            raise Exception("cannot modify a finalized TrailsDict")
        del self._trails[key]

    def update(self, value):
        if self._frozen is not None or self._mmap is not None:
            raise Exception("cannot modify a finalized TrailsDict")
        if isinstance(value, (TrailsDict, dict)):
            for key in value:

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