SQLITE_IOERR_DELETEERRORTier 2 — Caution⚠️ MEDIUM confidenceI/O error deleting journal file
Category: I/O ErrorVersions: 3.0+
🔴 Production Risk Error
Medium — stale journal left; will be recovered on next open.
What this means
SQLITE_IOERR_DELETE (2570) is returned when SQLite cannot delete the rollback journal or WAL file after a transaction completes. This can leave a stale journal file.
Why it happens
- 1File is locked by another process.
- 2Filesystem is read-only.
- 3Insufficient permissions to delete the journal file.
How to reproduce
Post-commit journal cleanup.
trigger — this will ERROR
# Stale -journal file: my.db-journal remains after error
# Next open will trigger hot journal recoverysqlite3.DatabaseError: disk I/O error
Fix 1
Why this works
Ensure the process has write permission to the database directory.
Fix 2
Why this works
Check for processes holding open handles to the journal file (lsof).
Fix 3
Why this works
Stale journals are harmless — they will be rolled back on next open.
Sources
📚 Official docs: https://www.sqlite.org/rescode.html#ioerr_delete
🔧 Source ref: sqlite3.h — SQLITE_IOERR_DELETE = 2570
Confidence assessment
⚠️ MEDIUM confidence
Stable.
See also
⚙️ 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 →