Before you begin reading this guide, we recommend you try running the Elasticsearch Error Check-Up which analyzes 2 JSON files to detect many configuration errors.
To easily locate the root cause and resolve this issue try AutoOps for Elasticsearch & OpenSearch. It diagnoses problems by analyzing hundreds of metrics collected by a lightweight agent and offers guidance for resolving them.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” Couldn’t convert task result to XContent for ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: task.
Overview
A task is an Elasticsearch operation, which can be any request performed on an Elasticsearch cluster, such as a delete by query request, a search request and so on. Elasticsearch provides a dedicated Task API for the task management which includes various actions, from retrieving the status of current running tasks to canceling any long running task.
Examples
Get all currently running tasks on all nodes of the cluster
Apart from other information, the response of the below request contains task IDs of all the tasks which can be used to get detailed information about the particular task in question.
GET _tasks
Get detailed information of a particular task
Where clQFAL_VRrmnlRyPsu_p8A:1132678759 is the ID of the task in below request
GET _tasks/clQFAL_VRrmnlRyPsu_p8A:1132678759
Get all the current tasks running on particular nodes
GET _tasks?nodes=nodeId1,nodeId2
Cancel a task
Where clQFAL_VRrmnlRyPsu_p8A:1132678759 is the ID of the task in the below request
POST /_tasks/clQFAL_VRrmnlRyPsu_p8A:1132678759/_cancel?pretty
Notes
- The Task API will be most useful when you want to investigate the spike of resource utilization in the cluster or want to cancel an operation.
Log Context
Log “Couldn’t convert task result to XContent for [{}]”classname is TaskResultsService.java We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
IndexRequestBuilder index = client.prepareIndex(TASK_INDEX).setId(taskResult.getTask().taskId().toString());
try (XContentBuilder builder = XContentFactory.contentBuilder(Requests.INDEX_CONTENT_TYPE)) {
taskResult.toXContent(builder; new ToXContent.MapParams(Map.of(INCLUDE_CANCELLED_PARAM; "false")));
index.setSource(builder);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new ElasticsearchException("Couldn't convert task result to XContent for [{}]"; e; taskResult.getTask());
}
doStoreResult(STORE_BACKOFF_POLICY.iterator(); index; listener);
}
private void doStoreResult(Iterator backoff; IndexRequestBuilder index; ActionListener listener) {
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