vitessio/vitess · error

GetTabletMap() failed: %v

Error message

GetTabletMap() failed: %v

What it means

DeleteShard first gathers all tablet aliases registered for the shard, then loads their full records via topo.Server.GetTabletMap. That call aggregates per-tablet lookup errors; if it fails for a reason other than a single missing node (e.g. topo server connection issues), DeleteShard aborts with this wrapped message.

Source

Thrown at go/vt/wrangler/shard.go:118

			}
		case err == nil:
			// We found a ShardReplication object. We
			// trust it to have all tablet records.
			aliases = make([]*topodatapb.TabletAlias, len(sri.Nodes))
			for i, n := range sri.Nodes {
				aliases[i] = n.TabletAlias
			}
		default:
			return fmt.Errorf("GetShardReplication(%v, %v, %v) failed: %v", cell, keyspace, shard, err)
		}

		// Get the corresponding Tablet records. Note
		// GetTabletMap ignores ErrNoNode, and it's good for
		// our purpose, it means a tablet was deleted but is
		// still referenced.
		tabletMap, err := wr.ts.GetTabletMap(ctx, aliases, nil)
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("GetTabletMap() failed: %v", err)
		}

		// Remove the tablets that don't belong to our
		// keyspace/shard from the map.
		for a, ti := range tabletMap {
			if ti.Keyspace != keyspace || ti.Shard != shard {
				delete(tabletMap, a)
			}
		}

		// Now see if we need to DeleteTablet, and if we can, do it.
		if len(tabletMap) > 0 {
			if !recursive {
				return fmt.Errorf("shard %v/%v still has %v tablets in cell %v; use -recursive or remove them manually", keyspace, shard, len(tabletMap), cell)
			}

			wr.Logger().Infof("Deleting all tablets in shard %v/%v cell %v", keyspace, shard, cell)
			for tabletAlias, tabletInfo := range tabletMap {

View on GitHub (pinned to 01a25a7d17)

Solutions

1. Check connectivity to the topo server (zk/etcd) and retry the DeleteShard command; DeleteShard is idempotent for already-deleted tablets.
2. Inspect the wrapped inner error (`%v` at the end of the message) to identify which tablet alias or topo operation failed.
3. Verify vtctld is started with the correct topo server flags (--topo_implementation, --topo_global_server_address, --topo_global_root).
4. If a specific tablet record is corrupt, delete it with `vtctldclient DeleteTablet <alias>` and re-run DeleteShard.

Example fix

// before
vtctldclient --server :15999 DeleteShard commerce/0
// fails with topo read error
// after
# fix topo connectivity, then retry
vtctldclient --server :15999 --topo_implementation etcd2 --topo_global_server_address localhost:2379 DeleteShard commerce/0

// Go: verify topo reachability before DeleteShard
aliases, err := ts.GetTabletAliasesByShard(ctx, keyspace, shard)
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("topo not readable, aborting DeleteShard: %w", err)
}
_ = aliases

// Go: retry transient topo errors
var lastErr error
for i := 0; i < 3; i++ {
    err := wr.DeleteShard(ctx, keyspace, shard, nil, true)
    if err == nil {
        return nil
    }
    lastErr = err
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "GetTabletMap() failed") {
        time.Sleep(2 * time.Second)
        continue
    }
    break
}
return lastErr

When it happens

Trigger: Calling DeleteShard (via `vtctldclient DeleteShard`) when the topo server cannot read one or more tablet records — e.g. topo server outage, permission errors, or malformed tablet records — and GetTabletMap returns a non-nil error other than ignorable ErrNoNode entries.

Common situations: Zookeeper/etcd connectivity problems during shard teardown; a partially deleted shard where topo reads fail intermittently; run with wrong topo flags pointing at the wrong topo server.

Related errors

• can't delete tablet %v: %v
• cannot delete SrvKeyspace from cell %v for keyspace %v: %w
• source shard must have a primary for copying schema: %v
• no primary in shard %v/%v
• shard %v/%v still has %v tablets in cell %v; use -recursive

AI-assisted analysis of vitessio/vitess@01a25a7d17 (2026-09-01). Data as JSON: /api/errors/326d809d8dde4836. Report an issue: GitHub.