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Werk #19840: Value store: handle corrupt persistence file gracefully instead of crashing

Component Core & setup
Title Value store: handle corrupt persistence file gracefully instead of crashing
Date Apr 21, 2026
Level Trivial Change
Class Bug Fix
Compatibility Compatible - no manual interaction needed
Checkmk versions & editions
2.6.0b1
Not yet released
Checkmk Community, Checkmk Pro, Checkmk Ultimate, Checkmk Cloud, Checkmk Ultimate MT
2.5.0p1
Not yet released
Checkmk Community, Checkmk Pro, Checkmk Ultimate, Checkmk Cloud, Checkmk Ultimate MT

When the value store file (stored in tmpfs) used to persist counter values across check cycles could not be decoded, the next check execution crashed with a JSONDecodeError while loading the file. This affected every check on the host, not just the one whose counters were corrupted.

This most commonly surfaced as a side effect of an upgrade from 2.3 to 2.4, where the on-disk format changed without a compatibility path: files written by 2.3 looked corrupt to 2.4.

Checkmk now logs a warning and falls back to an empty value store when the persistence file cannot be decoded. Counter history is lost for the affected host until the next successful write, but checks continue to run.

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