temporalio/temporal · error

unable to get namespace details: %w

Error message

unable to get namespace details: %w

What it means

GenerateDeletedNamespaceNameActivity generates a new name for a namespace being deleted and confirms uniqueness via GetNamespace. On any error other than NamespaceNotFound or AlreadyExists-style collision handling, it logs and wraps the failure with this error, returning an empty namespace name. NamespaceNotFound is the expected success signal (name is free).

Source

Thrown at service/worker/deletenamespace/activities.go:206

		suffix := fmt.Sprintf("-deleted-%s", nsID.String()[:suffixLength])
		if strings.HasSuffix(nsName.String(), suffix) {
			logger.Info("Namespace is already renamed for deletion")
			return nsName, nil
		}
		newName := fmt.Sprintf("%s%s", nsName, suffix)

		_, err := a.metadataManager.GetNamespace(ctx, &persistence.GetNamespaceRequest{
			Name: newName,
		})
		switch err.(type) {
		case nil:
			logger.Warn("Regenerate namespace name due to collision.", tag.String("wf-new-namespace", newName))
		case *serviceerror.NamespaceNotFound:
			logger.Info("Generated new name for deleted namespace.", tag.String("wf-new-namespace", newName))
			return namespace.Name(newName), nil
		default:
			logger.Error("Unable to get namespace details.", tag.Error(err))
			return namespace.EmptyName, fmt.Errorf("unable to get namespace details: %w", err)
		}
	}
	// Should never get here because namespace ID is guaranteed to be unique.
	return namespace.EmptyName, fmt.Errorf("unable to generate new name for deleted namespace %s. ID %q is not unique", nsName, nsID)

}

func (a *localActivities) RenameNamespaceActivity(ctx context.Context, nsID namespace.ID, previousName namespace.Name, newName namespace.Name) error {
	if newName == previousName {
		return nil
	}

	ctx = headers.SetCallerName(ctx, previousName.String())

	renameNamespaceRequest := &persistence.RenameNamespaceRequest{
		PreviousName: previousName.String(),
		NewName:      newName.String(),
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to bde624efd1)

Solutions

1. Retry the delete-namespace workflow once the underlying GetNamespace/persistence failure is resolved — the generation loop is idempotent.
2. Inspect the wrapped error (and the logged tag.Error) to determine whether it's a persistence, timeout, or frontend lookup failure.
3. Verify the frontend/namespace service is reachable from the worker executing this activity.
4. Add a retry policy on this activity so transient lookups failures don't fail namespace deletion outright.

Example fix

// before
name, err := activities.GenerateDeletedNamespaceNameActivity(ctx, nsName, nsID) // transient GetNamespace error aborts
if err != nil {
  return err
}
// after
err = workflow.ExecuteActivity(ctx, a.GenerateDeletedNamespaceNameActivity, nsName, nsID).Get(ctx, &name) // with RetryPolicy in ActivityOptions
if err != nil {
  logger.Warn("namespace rename pending; will retry", tag.Error(err))
  return err // workflow retry policy retries
}

// verify namespace frontend availability before the rename step
if _, err := frontendClient.GetNamespace(ctx, &frontendservice.GetNamespaceRequest{Namespace: nsName.String()}); err != nil {
  var nf *serviceerror.NamespaceNotFound
  if !errors.As(err, &nf) {
    return fmt.Errorf("namespace lookup unhealthy; postpone deletion: %w", err)
  }
}

err := workflow.ExecuteActivity(ctx, a.GenerateDeletedNamespaceNameActivity, nsName, nsID).Get(ctx, &newName)
if err != nil {
  if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "unable to get namespace details") {
    logger.Warn("transient namespace lookup failure during rename; will retry", tag.Error(err))
    return err // workflow-level retry
  }
  return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: The GetNamespace lookup performed inside the uniqueness-check loop returns an unexpected error — persistence failure, timeout, or any non-NamespaceNotFound service error — during deleted-namespace name generation.

Common situations: Frontend/persistence outage while running the delete-namespace workflow; namespace cache/persistence inconsistency; transient DB errors during the rename step of namespace deletion.

Related errors

• corrupted history event batch, wrong version and IDs
• corrupted history event batch, empty events
• page size to read history tasks must be positive
• history task from queue has nil blob
• enqueue task request task is nil

AI-assisted analysis of temporalio/temporal@bde624efd1 (2026-09-01). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c5fcf435f6794841. Report an issue: GitHub.