fatal error: all goroutines are asleep - deadlock!

Quick fix

Read the commands before running them. Anything that restarts a service, deletes data or changes permissions should be tried on a non-production system first.

# Ensure channels are buffered or have receivers
ch := make(chan int, 1)
# Close channels when done sending
close(ch)
# Use select with default for non-blocking ops
select {
case msg := <-ch:
    process(msg)
default:
    // non-blocking
}

How to diagnose Go errors

Go's runtime is unusually good at telling you what went wrong. concurrent map writes and all goroutines are asleep - deadlock! are precise diagnoses rather than vague crashes. The recurring themes are nil zero values that need explicit initialisation (maps, channels, pointers inside interfaces), unsynchronised shared state, and contexts that are cancelled upstream.

If the quick fix above does not resolve it, work through these steps. They apply to this whole class of error, not just to this one message, which is usually what saves the time.

1. Run tests and, where possible, production builds under the race detector: go test -race ./.... It finds data races that are invisible under normal execution.
2. Read the full panic output. Go prints every goroutine's stack, and the one that matters is usually not the first.
3. For context canceled, walk up the call chain to find who cancelled: a client disconnect, a timeout, or a parent context that went out of scope are the three sources.
4. Distinguish a nil interface from an interface holding a nil pointer. var p *T = nil; var i I = p makes i != nil, which is the cause of most "interface conversion: interface is nil" surprises.
5. Use go tool pprof and runtime.NumGoroutine() to find goroutine leaks. A count that only ever grows means something is never returning.

Tools worth reaching for

• go test -race
• go vet
• go tool pprof
• GODEBUG=gctrace=1
• delve (dlv)

Authoritative references

Primary documentation for this error, worth reading before applying any fix in production.

📖 go.dev

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