SQLITE_IOERR_SHMOPENERRORTier 2 — Caution⚠️ MEDIUM confidenceI/O error opening WAL shared-memory file
Category: I/O ErrorVersions: 3.7.0+
🔴 Production Risk Error
High — WAL-mode reads will fail without -shm.
What this means
SQLITE_IOERR_SHMOPEN (4618) is returned when SQLite cannot open the WAL shared-memory (-shm) file. Without the -shm file WAL-mode readers cannot function.
Why it happens
- 1Insufficient permissions to create the -shm file in the database directory.
- 2Disk full preventing -shm file creation.
- 3Filesystem does not allow new file creation.
How to reproduce
WAL-mode database open when the -shm file cannot be created or opened.
trigger — this will ERROR
# ls -la /path/to/database/ # check write permission on directory
# df -h /path/to/database/ # check disk spacesqlite3.OperationalError: disk I/O error
Fix 1
Why this works
Grant write permission on the database directory to the application user.
Fix 2
Why this works
Free disk space if the filesystem is full.
Sources
📚 Official docs: https://www.sqlite.org/rescode.html#ioerr_shmopen
🔧 Source ref: sqlite3.h — SQLITE_IOERR_SHMOPEN = 4618
Confidence assessment
⚠️ MEDIUM confidence
Stable.
See also
🔗 Related errors
📄 Reference pages
WAL mode
⚙️ 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 →