Fatal: Fatal: config cannot be loaded: <config/0000000000> does not exist

Hi

I have used restic for half a year now and really like it, but yesterday one of my servers started running into an issue I have not seen before:

Doing backup to rclone:Jotta:core
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 720.254544ms: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 873.42004ms: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 1.054928461s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 1.560325776s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 3.004145903s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 2.147653057s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 3.739082318s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 5.099891944s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 10.263247495s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Load(<config/0000000000>, 0, 0) returned error, retrying after 19.514091959s: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Fatal: Fatal: config cannot be loaded: <config/0000000000> does not exist
Fatal: create repository at rclone:Jotta:core failed: Fatal: config file already exists

I wonder if anyone has some tips for debugging this?
I found two issues, one which seem to have been resolved back in 0.8.3
And one which seem to mostly be about rest-server.

About my system:
Issue first appeared with Restic 0.10.0, still persist after updating to 0.12.0
The failing backend is writing to Jottacloud via rclone (1.54.1)

I have multiple other machines that also backup to Jotta, none of these have seen errors as of now.
The same machine is also backing up to a rest-server, and that still works fine.

Thanks
Kristoffer

Which commands are you running exactly?
It looks like a mixture of backup and init? Are you able to manually access the config file in the repository e.g. via rclone?

@MichaelEischer Hi, sorry for late reply

So it turned out that it might have been a two part problem, first the config output above happened, but then after a couple of days it resolved itself. It came from all the commands I tried check, backup, snapshots etc. This leads me to think that it was a blip in the underlying storage (Jotta).

Then when it returned, a bunch of snapshots were broken, it looked like a bunch of data was gone/corrupted, I managed to clean up the snapshots with the repair PR, accepting the lost data, and now I am building new backups successfully.

I think in the end it was not a restic issue, but a Jotta issue, I will start treating it as a semi stable storage, making sure to run check often (daily).

Thanks
Kristoffer