Common Errors

This page helps you understand and resolve error messages written to stderr or your logs.

connection refused

This message indicates a client is trying to connect to a node that is either not running or is not listening on the specified interfaces (i.e., hostname or port).

To resolve this issue, do one of the following:

• If the node hasn't yet been started, start the node.
• If you specified a --host flag when starting the node, you must include it with all other cockroach commands or change the COCKROACH_HOST environment variable..
• If you specified a --port flag when starting the node, you must include it with all other cockroach commands or change the COCKROACH_PORT environment variable.

If you're not sure what the --host and --port values might have been, you can look in the node's logs. If necessary, you can also terminate the cockroach process, and then restart the node:

$ pkill cockroach

$ cockroach start [flags]

node is running secure mode, SSL connection required

This message indicates that the cluster is using TLS encryption to protect network communication, and the client is trying to open a connection without using the required TLS certificates.

To resolve this issue, use the cockroach cert client-create command to generate a client certificate and key for the user trying to connect. For a secure deployment walkthrough, including generating security certificates and connecting clients, see Manual Deployment.

retry transaction

Messages with the error code 40001 and the string retry transaction indicate that a transaction failed because it conflicted with another concurrent or recent transaction accessing the same data. The transaction needs to be retried by the client. See client-side transaction retries for more details.

node belongs to cluster <cluster ID> but is attempting to connect to a gossip network for cluster <another cluster ID>

This message usually indicates that a node tried to connect to a cluster, but the node is already a member of a different cluster. This is determined by metadata in the node's data directory. To resolve this issue, do one of the following:

• Choose a different directory to store the CockroachDB data:

  $ cockroach start [flags] --store=[new directory] --join=[cluster host]:26257
  

• Remove the existing directory and start a node joining the cluster again:

  $ rm -r cockroach-data/
  

  $ cockroach start [flags] --join=[cluster host]:26257
  

This message can also occur in the following scenario:

1. The first node of a cluster is started without the --join flag.
2. Subsequent nodes are started with the --join flag pointing to the first node.
3. The first node is stopped and restarted after the node's data directory is deleted or using a new directory. This causes the first node to initialize a new cluster.
4. The other nodes, still communicating with the first node, notice that their cluster ID and the first node's cluster ID do not match.

To avoid this scenario, update your scripts to use the new, recommended approach to initializing a cluster:

1. Start each initial node of the cluster with the --join flag set to addresses of 3 to 5 of the initial nodes.
2. Run the cockroach init command against any node to perform a one-time cluster initialization.
3. When adding more nodes, start them with the same --join flag as used for the initial nodes.

For more guidance, see this example.

open file descriptor limit of <number> is under the minimum required <number>

CockroachDB can use a large number of open file descriptors, often more than is available by default. This message indicates that the machine on which a CockroachDB node is running is under CockroachDB's recommended limits.

For more details on CockroachDB's file descriptor limits and instructions on increasing the limit on various platforms, see File Descriptors Limit.

replicas failing with "0 of 1 store with an attribute matching []; likely not enough nodes in cluster

When running a single-node cluster

When running a single-node CockroachDB cluster, an error about replicas failing will eventually show up in the node's log files, for example:

E160407 09:53:50.337328 storage/queue.go:511  [replicate] 7 replicas failing with "0 of 1 store with an attribute matching []; likely not enough nodes in cluster"

This happens because CockroachDB expects three nodes by default. If you do not intend to add additional nodes, you can stop this error by updating your default zone configuration to expect only one node:

# Insecure cluster:
$ cockroach zone set .default --insecure --disable-replication

# Secure cluster:
$ cockroach zone set .default --certs-dir=[path to certs directory] --disable-replication

The --disable-replication flag automatically reduces the zone's replica count to 1, but you can do this manually as well:

# Insecure cluster:
$ echo 'num_replicas: 1' | cockroach zone set .default --insecure -f -

# Secure cluster:
$ echo 'num_replicas: 1' | cockroach zone set .default --certs-dir=[path to certs directory] -f -

See Configure Replication Zones for more details.

When running a multi-node cluster

When running a multi-node CockroachDB cluster, if you see an error like the one above about replicas failing, some nodes might not be able to talk to each other. For recommended actions, see Cluster Setup Troubleshooting.

clock synchronization error: this node is more than 500ms away from at least half of the known nodes

This error indicates that a node has spontaneously shut down because it detected that its clock is out of sync with at least half of the other nodes in the cluster by 80% of the maximum offset allowed (500ms by default). CockroachDB requires moderate levels of clock synchronization to preserve data consistency, so the node shutting down in this way avoids the risk of consistency anomalies.

To prevent this from happening, you should run clock synchronization software on each node. For guidance on synchronizing clocks, see the tutorial for your deployment environment:

context deadline exceeded

This message occurs when a component of CockroachDB gives up because it was relying on another component that has not behaved as expected, for example, another node dropped a network connection. To investigate further, look in the node's logs for the primary failure that is the root cause.

Something Else?

Try searching the rest of our docs for answers or using our other support resources, including:

• CockroachDB Community Forum
• CockroachDB Community Slack
• StackOverflow
• CockroachDB Support Portal

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