Elasticsearch: Searching for a particular term breaks when logged in to mahara.org

[Aaron Barnes]

This happens while using the search box in the upper right hand corner of the page on http://mahara.org

I can consistently get the search to throw an error when searching for "Jaybee" while logged in. This does not occur while logged out, or the other user I tested.

The error is: "A nonrecoverable error occurred. This probably means you have encountered a bug in the system"

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Replicated. It errors out when I'm logged in, but it works when I'm logged out.

Here is the error from the Apache logs. It's unclear whether this is a code problem, or a mahara.org infrastructure problem.

[Thu Nov 06 14:57:56 2014] (lib/errors.php:457) An exception was thrown of class Elastica\\Exception\\ResponseException. , referer: https://mahara.org/admin/users/edit.php?id=680
[Thu Nov 06 14:57:56 2014] (lib/errors.php:457) THIS IS BAD and should be changed to something extending MaharaException,, referer: https://mahara.org/admin/users/edit.php?id=680
[Thu Nov 06 14:57:56 2014] (lib/errors.php:457) unless the exception is from a third party library., referer: https://mahara.org/admin/users/edit.php?id=680
[Thu Nov 06 14:57:56 2014] (lib/errors.php:457) Original trace follows, referer: https://mahara.org/admin/users/edit.php?id=680
[Thu Nov 06 14:57:56 2014] (lib/elastica/lib/Elastica/Transport/Http.php:137) SearchPhaseExecutionException[Failed to execute phase [query], total failure; shardFailures {[EQCeqgZKTf6i_3a2-8Bz6Q][mahara-mahara-org-prod-index-one][2]: RemoteTransportException[[learn-search2][inet[/10.24.128.40:9300]][search/phase/query]]; nested: SearchParseException[[mahara-mahara-org-prod-index-one][2]: query[_all:jaybe],from[0],size[10]: Parse Failure [Failed to parse source [{"from":0,"size":10,"query":{"query_string":{"query":"Jaybee","analyzer":"mahara_analyzer","default_operator":"AND"}},"filter":{"and":[{"or":[{"missing":{"field":"access.general"}},{"term":{"access.general":"public"}},{"term":{"access.general":"loggedin"}},{"and":[{"term":{"access.general":"friends"}},{"terms":{"owner":["206","1688","33864","2491","35573","4872","801"]}}]},{"terms":{"access.groups.member":["1033","3","3","1028","1028","1","6","6","118","118","40","20","20","37","37"]}},{"terms":{"access.groups.ad
min":["1033","1","40"]}},{"term":{"owner":"32554"}},{"term":{"access.usrs":"32554"}}]},{"term":{"mainfacetterm":null}}]},"facets":{"mainFacetTerm":{"facet_filter":{"and":[{"or":[{"missing":{"field":"access.general"}},{"term":{"access.general":"public"}},{"term":{"access.general":"loggedin"}},{"and":[{"term":{"access.general":"friends"}},{"terms":{"owner":["206","1688","33864","2491","35573","4872","801"]}}]},{"terms":{"access.groups.member":["1033","3","3","1028","1028","1","6","6","118","118","40","20","20","37","37"]}},{"terms":{"access.groups.admin":["1033","1","40"]}},{"term":{"owner":"32554"}},{"term":{"access.usrs":"32554"}}]}]},"terms":{"field":"mainfacetterm","order":"count"}},"secFacetTerm":{"facet_filter":{"and":[{"or":[{"missing":{"field":"access.general"}},{"term":{"access.general":"public"}},{"term":{"access.general":"loggedin"}},{"and":[{"term":{"access.general":"friends"}},{"terms":{"owner":["206","1688","33864","2491","35573","4872","801"]}}]},{"terms":{"access.groups.member":["1033","3","3",
"1028","1028","1","6","6","118","118","40","20","20","37","37"]}},{"terms":{"access.groups.admin":["1033","1","40"]}},{"term":{"owner":"32554"}},{"term":{"access.usrs":"32554"}}]},{"term":{"mainfacetterm":null}}]},"terms":{"field":"secfacetterm","order":"count"}}},"sort":[{"_score":{"order":"desc"}},{"_score":{"order":"desc"}}]}]]]; nested...

[Aaron Barnes (aaron-barnes)]

Have replicated with:

Jaybee
AaronB
Sonn

But only while logged in.

I think it might be terms in email address that don't appear anywhere else.

Or perhaps something to do with pending friend requests.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Confirmed that this problem is still present on mahara.org after the upgrade to 15.04.

It's either a problem in our particular Elasticsearch server setup at Mahara HQ, or it's a bug in our Elasticsearch code itself.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

This problem no longer happens on mahara.org. Whatever it was, the problem was probably fixed in the last round of Elasticsearch bug fixes.

[Dirk Meyer (dirkca68)]

Just a comment that we had to use ElasticSearch 1.5.2 to make it work in Mahara 15.10 on Debian and Mysql.

[Dirk Meyer (dirkca68)]

and php 5.4

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Hi Dirk,

For clarification, what version of ElasticSearch did you try before 1.5.2?

I tried to make the code backwards-compatible with the previous version of Elasticsearch required by Mahara (0.90). But I haven't yet tested it against Elasticsearch 2.0

Cheers,
Aaron

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

I checked with Dirk, and he verified that the versions they tried which don't work were later than 1.5.2. Specifically: 1.6 (possibly), 1.7.3, and 2.0.

So, it looks like Elasticsearch is not trying to hard to maintain backwards compatibility, and we'll need to upgrade the elasticsearch plugin again sometime soon.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

I've filed a couple of bugs based on this discussion:

Upgrade Elastica to latest version (currently 2.3.1): https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1517732

Improve the documentation of which version of Elasticsearch we support: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1517729