#23820·consul

Consul validate misses typo in path to TLS certificates in configuration file that prevents start

Author: mekkimCreated Aug 12, 2026Updated Aug 12, 2026

Overview of the Issue

consul validate returns valid if typo in path to TLS cert file location but consul will fail to start when it can't find the cert file


Reproduction Steps

Steps to reproduce this issue, eg:

  • Create a config file with the TLS stanza and the standard TLS cert paths to the .pem files.
  • Insert a typo into one of the file paths
  • Run consul validate -> It will return valid (assuming no other problems in the config file!)
  • Attempt to start consul -> It will fail and with no useful error message at that!

Operating system and Environment details

consul 2.0.3+ent on RHEL 9.7 x86_64 VM on nutanix hypervisor