“My upload looks lost”

Symptom

You just uploaded content and got a reference back. The reference works locally:

curl -I http://localhost:1633/bzz/<ref>/    # 200 OK

…but stewardship says it isn’t retrievable:

bee-check <ref> --bee http://localhost:1633
# status  Unretrievable

Diagnose

The most common cause is a deferred upload that hasn’t been pushed to the network yet. Bee’s default is to accept the upload, return the reference immediately, and push chunks in the background. The /bzz endpoint serves from the local store; the /stewardship endpoint deliberately goes through the network retrieval path — which means it can’t see chunks that haven’t yet propagated.

Confirm with --per-chunk from a different vantage. If most or all chunks miss everywhere except your uploading node, you’re looking at a not-yet-pushed upload.

Fix

Option A: wait. Background push completes on its own. Re-run bee-check after a few minutes.

Option B: force an immediate push. Re-upload synchronously by sending swarm-deferred-upload: false on the original upload — Bee will only acknowledge after every chunk is pushed and stamped.

Option C: re-seed with a current batch. If the original batch is fine but you want chunks pushed now:

bee-check <ref> --reseed --stamp <current-batch-id> --bee http://localhost:1633

This re-fires the stamp and re-pushes anything the network is missing.

Note: If your local store has been garbage-collected and there’s no peer with the chunks, none of these work — the upload is genuinely lost. That’s why deferred-upload reliability matters: you only get one chance to push.