What causes "%s must be a positive integer" in t8y2/dbx?

Set the variable to a plain positive integer (e.g. 100)

%s must be a positive integer

Error message

%s must be a positive integer

What it means

envInt parses an environment variable as an integer and rejects any value that is not parseable or not strictly positive, exiting via fatal with '%s must be a positive integer'. Bench configuration variables must all be positive ints.

Source

Thrown at agents/drivers/iotdb/bench/go/main.go:268

func elapsedMS(started time.Time) float64 {
	return float64(time.Since(started).Microseconds()) / 1_000
}

func roundMillis(value float64) float64 {
	return float64(int64(value*1_000+0.5)) / 1_000
}

func env(name, fallback string) string {
	if value := os.Getenv(name); value != "" {
		return value
	}
	return fallback
}

func envInt(name string, fallback int) int {
	value, err := strconv.Atoi(env(name, strconv.Itoa(fallback)))
	if err != nil || value <= 0 {
		fatal(fmt.Errorf("%s must be a positive integer", name))
	}
	return value
}

func writeJSON(value any) {
	encoder := json.NewEncoder(os.Stdout)
	encoder.SetEscapeHTML(false)
	if err := encoder.Encode(value); err != nil {
		fatal(err)
	}
}

func fatal(err error) {
	fmt.Fprintln(os.Stderr, err)
	os.Exit(1)
}

View on GitHub (pinned to c0390bff16)

Solutions

Set the variable to a plain positive integer (e.g. 100)
Remove unit suffixes and separators ('30000' not '30s', '1,000')
Check loadConfig/main.go for the exact variable names expected
Unset an empty-valued variable so the built-in fallback applies

Example fix

// before
export BENCH_HOLD_MS=30s
// after
export BENCH_HOLD_MS=30000

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

func checkPositiveIntEnv(name string) error {
  v := os.Getenv(name)
  if v == "" { return nil }
  n, err := strconv.Atoi(v)
  if err != nil || n <= 0 {
    return fmt.Errorf("%s must be a plain positive integer, got %q", name, v)
  }
  return nil
}

Prevention

Never attach unit suffixes or thousands separators to int env vars
Validate all bench env vars in a shell preflight before launching
Prefer unset over empty-string export so fallbacks apply

When it happens

Trigger: Setting any bench int env var (e.g. IOTDB_BENCH_ITERATIONS, BENCH_HOLD_MS, workload iterations) to 0, a negative number, or non-numeric text like '10s' or 'ten'.

Common situations: Duration-style values like '30000ms' instead of '30000'; empty variable defaulting to '' after being exported empty; copy-pasted config with a comma '1,000'.

Understand the failure class

Background: "is not a valid" / "Invalid ... value" environment variable errors: how libraries validate env vars and what to do when they reject yours — this error's family across 48 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of t8y2/dbx@c0390bff16 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/00014fec1a9d0ae5. Report an issue: GitHub.