pgref.dev/sqlite/errors/SQLITE_INTERNAL
SQLITE_INTERNALFATALTier 3 — Handle with care⚠️ MEDIUM confidence

Internal logic error in SQLite

Category: Internal ErrorVersions: 3.0+

🔴 Production Risk Error

Critical — close and reopen the database; restart the process.

What this means

SQLITE_INTERNAL (2) indicates an internal consistency check failed within the SQLite library itself. This should never occur in a correctly compiled SQLite build and almost certainly indicates a bug in SQLite or severe memory corruption.

Why it happens

  1. 1Bug in the SQLite library itself.
  2. 2Memory corruption caused by another part of the application.
  3. 3Mismatched SQLite header and library versions.

How to reproduce

Extremely rare. May appear in fuzzing or if the SQLite amalgamation was compiled incorrectly.

trigger — this will ERROR
# Not normally reproducible in user code
# If seen, file a bug at https://sqlite.org/forum/
sqlite3.OperationalError or OperationalError with message referencing internal error.

Fix 1

Why this works

Check that your SQLite shared library matches the header version (sqlite3_libversion()).

Fix 2

Why this works

Ensure no other thread or process is corrupting shared memory.

Fix 3

Why this works

Report the issue to the SQLite developers with a reproducible test case.

What not to do

Why it's wrong:

Sources

📚 Official docs: https://www.sqlite.org/rescode.html#internal

🔧 Source ref: sqlite3.h — SQLITE_INTERNAL = 2

📖 Further reading: SQLite result codes

Confidence assessment

⚠️ MEDIUM confidence

Stable. Rarely seen in practice.

See also

📄 Reference pages

SQLite result codes
⚙️ This error reference was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy. Examples are provided to illustrate common scenarios and may not cover every case. Always test fixes in a development environment before applying to production. Spotted an error? Suggest a correction →