217

I am new to Android development; when I have been trying to sign the application I have got the following error. Can anyone help me on this issue?

keytool error :java.io.IoException:Incorrect AVA format

I have found some solution on the forums, for instance I need to run the debug.keystore but I was not successful.

Peter Reid
  • 5,139
  • 2
  • 37
  • 33
pallavi
  • 2,171
  • 2
  • 12
  • 3
  • Refer this links , https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/android-developers/1J7IFF_jPXQ , http://mortalpowers.com/news/android-development-error-incorrect-ava-format – rajeshwaran Aug 04 '12 at 11:48
  • And this: http://mortalpowers.com/news/android-development-error-incorrect-ava-format – tom_mai78101 Sep 10 '12 at 12:35
  • Can't google say "Invalid Character". Instead, they say "Incorret AVA format" Strip away any non alphanumeric characters, no accents and no weird letters. – Josh Apr 01 '14 at 07:17

9 Answers9

555

Probably you entered illegal character(something like,(comma)) in a field for Name, Organization or somewhere else.

Of course, if you really want some character can be escaped with \ sign

"+" (plus sign) sign also causes this issue. (People often tend to use + sign for the country code field)

Udara Seneviratne
  • 2,303
  • 1
  • 33
  • 49
rule
  • 5,657
  • 1
  • 16
  • 21
  • 30
    Just FYI, if you really want a comma in a field, you can escape it with a leading backslash, e.g. Acme\, Inc. See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/solaris/keytool.html. This also works in the signing dialog of the Eclipse IDE. – Yojimbo Apr 30 '13 at 21:26
  • 1
    I found in code the list of characters that must be escaped ,+=<>#;" – Rafael Membrives Feb 14 '17 at 09:49
54

I have faced an error while trying to export a signed .apk file with Eclipse ADT. The error was same like your error. In my case, I used a + sign before the country code. By removing the + sign from this name fixed the problem and allowed me to fully export my signed .apk file. Also, this error can occur when use comma,slash, semi-colon, quotation.

Ratna Halder
  • 1,954
  • 16
  • 17
22

You tried to use special characters while exporting apk.You can't use these special characters in any field shown while creating the apk. The special character set includes:

  • Commas (,)
  • Addition symbol (+)
  • Quotation mark (")
  • Back-slash ("\")
  • Angled brackets(< and >)
  • Semi-colon (;)
surhidamatya
  • 2,419
  • 32
  • 56
9

I solved these Exception by changing the country code:

+91 to India

Stephen
  • 9,899
  • 16
  • 90
  • 137
  • For this field you should be using the [iso 3166-1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1) country code, in your case "IN" – PassKit Aug 30 '14 at 04:52
7

I came on this error when I did not set the distinguished name option at all. This was corrected by setting the option to a validly formatted string.

this command failed with the AVA format exception: (line breaks added for legibility)

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_45\jre\bin>keytool 
-genkey -v -dname PatrickTaylor -validity 10000 
-keystore C:\drops\patrickkeystore

this command completed successfully:

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_45\jre\bin>keytool 
-genkey -v -dname PatrickTaylor -validity 10000 
-keystore C:\drops\patrickkeystore 
-dname "cn=Patrick Taylor, ou=engineering, o=company, c=US"
Patrick
  • 416
  • 3
  • 7
6

Special chars/escaping all good answers/could be the problem; you didn't share your actual "keytool" command line so harder to give an accurate answer. If you're trying to gen a pub/priv key pair ("-genkeypair" param), then 1 problem would be that the cert subject distinguished name ("-dname" arg) wasn't specified in the correct X.500 AVA ("Attribute/Value" Assertion) format. For example, omitting the "CN=" in front of the subject common name (CN). Param should look something like this:

keytool ... -dname="CN=SomeCertSubject" ...

In this distinguished name param, "CN" ("Common Name") is the "Attribute", "SomeCertSubject" is the "Value".

galaxis
  • 925
  • 8
  • 10
  • not exact but was close enough for me. i put companyname inc. and the . (dot) of the inc caused a fail. – dcarl661 Aug 28 '20 at 20:58
4

this "Probably you entered illegal character(something like ,(comma)) in a field for Name, Organization or somewhere else. " worked for me. I had a comma on the state or province. please mark this answer by rule as the answer; as + in +91 is a special character.

kingsley sithole
  • 41
  • 2
  • 1
    for me, the error was caused by comma between company name and llc. (thank you kingsley sithole). – tmr Oct 24 '14 at 17:18
4

I made a mistake by entering + in the front of the country code. so changed the values like below.

+7 to 7

it works for me.

Ajay Kumar
  • 111
  • 1
  • 4
2

It's a common mistake, when we're going to generate Signed APK in Android Studio. So in Keystore file you can't use any special character or symbol such as (, \ + - * / < > ; ' ") otherwise, you get java.io.IoException.

See a Demo, how can you fill-up your Keystore file:

Password: anything without special character or symbol

Alias: Key0 (up to you)

Validity (years): 25 (up to you)

First and last Name: Your proper Name but don't use special character in your name like $unny @dam

Organizational Unit: Your organization Name

Organization: Your organization Name

City or Locality: Your City Name

State or Province: Your State or Province Name

Country Code (XX): Use your country code, if you don't know then search Google.

Then click OK

Papel
  • 541
  • 4
  • 7