PERROR(1)

🌸 PERROR(1) — the "what does this error even MEAN" decoder ring 🌸

okay bestie so this page lives in the MariaDB Database System manual, section 1, and it's about a tiny little utility called perror that will ✨translate✨ your cryptic error codes into actual human words. no cap.

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💅 NAME 💅

perror — explain error codes

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

perror [options] errorcode ...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the vibe: whenever MariaDB hits most system errors, it doesn't just give you its own internal text message — it also hands you the system error code, and it does it in one of these two fits:

message ... (errno: #)
message ... (Errcode: #)

and you're sitting there like… okay bestie what does # mean 😭. well. you can figure out what that error code means by digging through your system's documentation, OR — and this is the iconic option — by using the perror utility. she's here to help.

perror prints out a description for a system error code or for a storage engine (table handler) error code. both. she does both.

you invoke her like this:

shell> perror [options] errorcode ...

and here's a real live example, look at her go:

shell> perror 13 64
OS error code  13:  Permission denied
OS error code  64:  Machine is not on the network

⚠️ heads up bestie: the meaning of system error messages can be dependent on your operating system. a given error code may mean completely different things on different operating systems. so like, don't @ your friend on a different OS and assume y'all are speaking the same language. you are not. 🙈

perror supports the following options:

• --help, --info, -I, -? — shows you a help message and then exits. she's helpful like that 🫶
• --silent, -s — silent mode. prints only the error message, nothing else. minimal. mysterious. main character energy.
• --verbose, -v — verbose mode. prints the error code AND the message. this one is the default behavior, so if you didn't ask for anything, this is what you're getting 💖
• --version, -V — displays version information and exits. she'll tell you who she is 👑

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright 2007-2008 MySQL AB, 2008-2010 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 2010-2025 MariaDB Foundation

This documentation is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it only under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with the program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1335 USA or see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

no like fr fr, read the license. it's giving legally binding and it's also giving "please read me" 📜

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

For more information, please refer to the MariaDB Documentation, available online at https://mariadb.com/docs/

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✨ AUTHOR ✨

MariaDB Foundation (http://www.mariadb.org/).

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 MariaDB 11.8, dated 5 March 2025 — so she's fresh, she's current, she's PERROR(1) and she ate. now go decode those error codes, you've got this 💜🦋