Q:

bq load: Error processing job... Unexpected. Please try again

bq load --max_bad_records=1000000 --format=json install.$date gs://production_data/install/install_$date.json.gz ./schema.json

Error:
BigQuery error in load operation: Error processing job 'xxxxxxxxxxxxx:job_c4932fa55c304c9f88224595071f1e17': Unexpected. Please try again.

bq show -j isn't any more helpful with the error message.
  "status": {
    "errorResult": {
      "message": "Unexpected. Please try again.",
      "reason": "internalError"
    },
    "errors": [
      {
        "message": "Unexpected. Please try again.",
        "reason": "internalError"
      }
    ],
    "state": "DONE"
  }

What's going wrong?

A:

You're importing the data as CSV, not json. This is due to a confusing flag in the bq tool: --format is the format of the output. You should use --source_format=json instead.
I've filed two internal bugs: One that the format/source_format flags are too easy to confuse, the other that we should give a better error when the format of the data doesn't match the format that was specified.

