Persistent "secrets.system.0 length must be >= 16, but got 0" Error in Pydio Cells

Pydio Cells
,
1

Hello everyone,

I’m currently experiencing an issue with my Pydio Cells installation on Unraid. My system was working fine until I attempted to modify the token lifespan settings (i wanted longer no activity logouts) in the pydio.json configuration file. Specifically, I tried to add:

"defaults": {
  "accessTokenLifespan": "8h",
  "refreshTokenLifespan": "24h"
}

After making this change and restarting the container, Pydio Cells stopped working completely and I started getting the following error in the logs:

{"level":"error","ts":"2025-07-11T11:14:50+02:00","logger":"pydio.gateway.websocket","msg":"The configuration contains values or keys which are invalid:"}
{"level":"error","ts":"2025-07-11T11:14:50+02:00","logger":"pydio.gateway.websocket","msg":"secrets.system.0: "}
{"level":"error","ts":"2025-07-11T11:14:50+02:00","logger":"pydio.gateway.websocket","msg":"                  ^-- length must be >= 16, but got 0"}

What version of Cells are you using?

4.4.15

What is the server OS? Database name/version? Browser name or mobile device description (if issue appears client-side)?

What steps have you taken to resolve this issue already?

What I’ve tried so far:

  1. Added the CELLS_SYSTEM_SECRET environment variable with a value longer than 16 characters
  2. Attempted to edit the pydio.json configuration file to include:

json

"secrets": {
  "system": ["abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456"]
}
  1. Restarted the container multiple times

The error persists despite these attempts. It appears that my configuration change somehow corrupted the system secret or its validation.

2

Hi,

To change token lifespan, you may visit Changing Token Lifespan - Pydio Documentation