thanos-io/thanos · error

Address is duplicated for --query flag.

Error message

Address %s is duplicated for --query flag.

What it means

The rule command requires each store API address given via --query to be unique. During Setup it builds a lookup map of conf.query.addrs and raises errors.Errorf when a duplicate address is seen. This is a configuration sanity check before constructing the store set.

Solutions

1. Deduplicate the --query address list so each endpoint appears exactly once.
2. Fix templating that appends extra addrs without dedup (use unique/sprig functions in Helm).
3. Use --query.sd-files or a query config file with deduped endpoints if the list is large.
4. Restart after correcting; note comparison is on the raw string, so ensure exact duplicates are removed.

Example fix

// before
thanos rule --query=qa:10901 --query=qb:10901 --query=qa:10901
// after
thanos rule --query=qa:10901 --query=qb:10901

def check_no_duplicate_queries(addrs):
    dupes = {a for a in addrs if addrs.count(a) > 1}
    if dupes:
        raise SystemExit(f"duplicate --query addresses: {sorted(dupes)}")
    return addrs

def is_unique(seq):
    return len(seq) == len(set(seq))

When it happens

Trigger: The same endpoint string appears twice in the --query flag list (or via repeated flags), e.g. --query=qa.example.com:9091 --query=qa.example.com:9091 (identical strings after normalization).

Common situations: Helm/Kustomize templates concatenating static and extra query addresses that overlap; copy-pasting the same address; service discovery config and static flags listing the same endpoint string.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Unknown argument", "Invalid value", and "must be one of": invalid CLI argument errors explained — this error's family across 35 libraries.

Related errors

• unsupported format for label
• --auto-gomemlimit.ratio must be greater than 0 and less…
• error validating the config
• level is bigger then default set of
• unknown sync strategy

AI-assisted analysis of thanos-io/thanos@35b8b99117 (2026-09-07). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fdb51aed43e13897. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at cmd/thanos/rule.go:216

		tsdbOpts := &tsdb.Options{
			MinBlockDuration:  int64(time.Duration(*tsdbBlockDuration) / time.Millisecond),
			MaxBlockDuration:  int64(time.Duration(*tsdbBlockDuration) / time.Millisecond),
			RetentionDuration: int64(time.Duration(*tsdbRetention) / time.Millisecond),
			NoLockfile:        *noLockFile,
			WALCompression:    compressutil.ParseCompressionType(*walCompression, compression.Snappy),
		}

		agentOpts := &agent.Options{
			WALCompression: compressutil.ParseCompressionType(*walCompression, compression.Snappy),
			NoLockfile:     *noLockFile,
		}

		// Parse and check query configuration.
		lookupQueries := map[string]struct{}{}
		for _, q := range conf.query.addrs {
			if _, ok := lookupQueries[q]; ok {
				return errors.Errorf("Address %s is duplicated for --query flag.", q)
			}

			lookupQueries[q] = struct{}{}
		}

		conf.queryConfigYAML, err = conf.query.configPath.Content()
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}

		if len(conf.query.sdFiles) == 0 && len(conf.query.addrs) == 0 && len(conf.queryConfigYAML) == 0 && len(conf.grpcQueryEndpoints) == 0 {
			return errors.New("no query configuration parameter was given")
		}
		if (len(conf.query.sdFiles) != 0 || len(conf.query.addrs) != 0 || len(conf.grpcQueryEndpoints) != 0) && len(conf.queryConfigYAML) != 0 {
			return errors.New("--query/--query.sd-files/--grpc-query-endpoint and --query.config* parameters cannot be defined at the same time")
		}

		// Parse and check alerting configuration.

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