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Empty filter values in TraceQL Search return 503 instead of a parser error (v0.8.1) #144

@fiodor-oscilar

Description

@fiodor-oscilar

When using Grafana's Tempo plugin against a VictoriaTraces datasource, leaving an empty value on a filter chip in the Search tab causes the request to fail with 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable instead of a structured 400 Bad Request with a parser error message. The 503 surfaces in Grafana's error toast and is opaque to the user.

Environment

  • VictoriaTraces: v0.8.1
  • Deployment shape: VTCluster (operator) — vtinsert + vtselect + vtstorage + requestsLoadBalancer
  • Grafana datasource: type tempo, pointing at vtselect:10471/select/tempo

Steps to reproduce

  1. In Grafana Explore, select a Tempo datasource backed by VictoriaTraces.
  2. Switch to Search query type.
  3. Add a tag filter chip and leave its value empty (e.g., span resource.service.name= with no value).
  4. Run the query.

Expected

A 400 Bad Request (or another 4xx) with a structured error body indicating a TraceQL parser/validation problem. The user should see what about the query is invalid.

Actual

A 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable response. The error body in our case is the nginx default error page (<center>nginx</center>), which strongly suggests the upstream VT response was either an unhandled error / panic / non-graceful timeout that our ingress wrapped — or VT genuinely returned a 5xx.

Open question for triage

We have not yet confirmed whether the 5xx originates inside VictoriaTraces or whether some intermediate layer is converting a structured 4xx into a 503. If the VT pod logs show a panic, error, or non-4xx response on receiving a query with an empty filter value, this is a VT bug. If VT cleanly returns 4xx, this is an infrastructure issue on our end and we'll close the issue.

Either way, a maintainer comment confirming what vtselect returns for a query with an empty filter value would unblock investigation.

Reporter context: Originally surfaced in internal feedback against our VictoriaTraces evaluation; not blocking but degrades the UX of the Search tab significantly.

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