Troubleshooting

When sending an action to the blockchain you get the error below

{
    "code":500,
    "message":"Internal Service Error",
    "error":{
        "code":3090003,
        "name":"unsatisfied_authorization",
        "what":"Provided keys, permissions, and delays do not satisfy declared authorizations",
        "details":[
            {
                "message":"transaction declares authority '{"actor":"account_name","permission":"permission_name"}', but does not have signatures for it under a provided delay of 0 ms, provided permissions [], provided keys ["EOS5ZcMvpgtDMdVtvCFewAQYTyfN6Vqhg4kdgauffx3jiaKaeWfY1"], and a delay max limit of 3888000000 ms",
                "file":"authorization_manager.cpp",
                "line_number":524,
                "method":"check_authorization"
            }
        ]
    }
}

Possible solution: Verify if you did not forget to set code for contract, is it possible that you only set the abi for the contract but not the code as well?

When sending an action to the blockchain an error similar to the one below is encountered

Error 3015014: Pack data exception
Error Details:
Unexpected input encountered while processing struct 'action_name_here'

Possible solution: You did not specify correctly the parameter when sending the action to the blockchain. When no parameter is needed the command should look like the one below

cleos push action eostutorial1 get '[]' -p eostutorial1@active

The command above is one way of sending correctly get action with no parameters to the blockchain.

When sending an action to the blockchain an error similar to the one below is encountered

error 2019-09-25T07:38:14.859 thread-0  main.cpp:3449                 main                 ] Failed with error: Assert Exception (10)
!action_type.empty(): Unknown action action_name in contract eostutorial1

Possible solution: Verify if the action attribute [[eosio::action]] is used when defining and/or declaring the action action_name for the contract.

When deploying a contract code to the blockchain a similar error with the ones below is encountered

Error 3160010: No abi file found
or
Error 3160009: No wasm file found

Possible solution: Verify that abi and wasm files exist in the directory specified in the cleos set contract command, and that their names match the directory name.

Action triggers a ram charge which cannot be initiated from a notification

Possible solution: This error happens because the notification action has no authorization to buy the needed RAM. In the context of multi-index tables, there is a table payer and a row payer. Only the contract can modify rows. The contract can create rows with a payer that did not authorize the action if the total amount of ram charged does not increase (e.g. delete a row and add another with the same payer). The table payer can not change until the last row is deleted. For the purposes of billing, a table is identified by the tuple contract, scope, table. When you create a row for a contract, scope, table tuple that doesn’t exist, you create a table with the same payer. This can outlive the original row which created it, if other rows were created with that combination and this prevents the original payer from getting their ram back. Secondary indexes throw in more complexity since they use the lower 4 bits of the table name, producing additional contract, scope, table tuples combinations. Key takeaway: payer is about billing, not access control

You successfully re-deployed the contract code, but when you query the table you get the custom message that you coded when the table is not initialized (doesn't exist), or the system error message below in case you do not have code that checks first if table exist

Error 3050003: eosio_assert_message assertion failure
Error Details:
assertion failure with message: singleton does not exist
pending console output:

Possible solution: It is possible that you changed the table name? That is the first, of eosio::name type, parameter which you passed to the eosio::template type alias definition. Or did you change the table structure definition at all? If you need to change the table structure definition there are some limitations and a couple of ways to do it which are explained in the Data Design and Migration section.

You successfully re-deployed the contract code, but when you query the table you get the fields of the row values swapped, that is, it appears the values stored in table rows are the same only that they are swapped between fields/columns

Possible solution: It is possible that you changed the order of the fields the table struct definition? If you change the order of the table struct definition, if the swapped fields have the same type you will see the data in the fields correctly, however if the types of the fields are different the results could be of something undefined. If you need to change the table structure definition there are some limitations and a couple of ways to do it which are explained in the Data Design and Migration section.

You successfully re-deployed the contract code, but when you query the table you get a parse error, like the one below, or the returned data seems to be garbage

error 2019-09-26T07:05:54.825 thread-0  main.cpp:3449                 main                 ] Failed with error: Parse Error (4)
Couldn't parse type_name

Possible solution: It is possible that you changed the type of the fields for the table struct definition? If you need to change the table structure definition there are some limitations and a couple of ways to do it which are explained in the Data Design and Migration section.

eosio-cpp process never completes

Possible solution: make sure you have at least 2 cores on the host that executes the eosio-cpp (e.g. docker container, VM, local sub-system)

You can not find the now() time function, or the result of the current_time_point functions are not what you expected them to be

Possible solution: The now() function has been replaced by current_time_point().sec_since_epoch(), it returns the time in microseconds from 1970 of the current block as a time_point. There's also available current_block_time() which returns the time in microseconds from 1970 of the current block as a block_timestamp. Be aware that for time base functions, the assumption is when you call something like now() or current_time() you will get the exact now/current time, however that is not the case with EOSIO, you get the block time, and only ever get the block time from the available sec_since_epoch() or current_block_time() no matter how many times you call it.

You successfully re-deployed the contract code, but when you broadcast one of the contracts methods to the blockchain you get below error message

Error 3050004: eosio_assert_code assertion failure
Error Details:
assertion failure with error code: 8000000000000000000

Possible solution: If you are referencing a smart contract from another smart contract and each of them have at least one action with the same name you will experience the above error when sending to the blockchain one of those actions, so what you have to do is to make sure the action names between those two contracts are not common.

Possible solution: There are a few reasons print statements do not show up in the output. One reason could be because an error occurs, in which case the whole transaction is rolled back and the print statements output is replaced by the error that occurs instead; Another reason is if you are in a loop, iterating through a table's rows for example and for each row you have a print statement that prints also the new line char at the '\n' only the chars before the new line char from the first iteration will be printed, nothing else after that, nothing from the second iteration onwards either.

The below code will print just the first line of the iteration.

  auto index=0;
  for (auto& item : testtab)
  {
    eosio::print_f("{item %}={%, %, %} \n", ++index, item.test_primary, item.secondary, item.datum);
  }

The below code will print all lines of the iteration separated by '|' char.

  auto index=0;
  for (auto& item : testtab)
  {
    eosio::print_f("{item %}={%, %, %} |", ++index, item.test_primary, item.secondary, item.datum);
  }

Possible solution: The key point here is the expected order and what you think it should be. Although the EOSIO is single threaded, when looking at your smart contract action code implementation, which let's say it has a series of print (either print_f or printf) statements, they might not necessarily be outputted in the order the apparent code workflow is. One example is when inline transactions are sent from your smart contract action code, and you expect to see the print statements from within the inline action code outputted before the print statements made after the inline action send statement. For better exemplification let's look at the code below:

[[eosio::action]] void multi_index_example::mod( name user, uint64_t n ) {

  // `mod` action implementation code goes here...

  print_f("Output line before the inline send action.")

  singleton_set_action singleton_set("eostutorial1"_n, {get_self(), "active"_n});
  singleton_set.send(get_self(), n, get_self());

  print_f("Output line after the inline send action.")
}

The code above has one print statement before the singleton_set.send and another one after the singleton_set.send. If you wrote some more print statements in the code that implements the singleton_set.send action and expect to see them before the second print statement then it is a wrong assumption. The inline actions are broadcasted to the network and they are executed at a different time, asynchronous of the current execution thread of the current multi_index_example::mod action, therefor it is impossible to predict when the print statements from inline action code will be outputted.

Assertion failure while creating an account after eosio.system was installed

cleos create account eosio bob EOS5HUanbay86UUnr1d4fuBsQ3ksjfgZYoLUVvrYVLy6pj4i8xqVY
Error 3050003: eosio_assert_message assertion failure
Error Details:
assertion failure with message: system contract must first be initialized

The failure is stating that eosio.system init action was not called yet. The init action is implemented by the void init(uint64_t, symbol) function. The first parameter is the version, this should always be 0 for now, until a new version of init will be created that handles more information. The second parameter is the system's symbol (i.e. for main net this is EOS). If you followed the BIOS Boot Sequence tutorial and created a system with the default symbol SYS then SYS shall be used as the system's symbol in the init action. It is whatever symbol you as the chain creator want to use in your EOSIO based blockchain.