Understanding Invalid Log Errors

Invalid log errors can occur in several scenarios. In this document, we'll discuss the different types of log errors and common methods for solving the issue.

Field mapping types

To make your search engine queries and analytics more effective, Explore maps each field by a data type so it knows how to display it according to its capabilities. There are two types of mapping fields:

• Dynamic - This is the default mapping type, determined by the value of the log fields mapped at the beginning of each day.
• Explicit - This is a forced mapping type, and when chosen, Explore will always map this field as the same data type.

For example, if the value of the log field is "yourField":123, Explore will map it as a number (Long).

“yourField”:”abc” will be mapped as a Keyword (String).

“yourField”:{“someField”:”someValue”} will be mapped as an Object.

yourField.someField will be mapped as a Keyword (String).

If a field is mapped as a string, Explore won’t allow you to run any mathematical queries on the field. If it’s an analyzed field, such as message, tags, or geoip_location, Explore won’t let you use it in an alert, a visualization, or a group by rule.

Field data type determines how each field is indexed and shown in Explore. Account admins can change the data types according to a predefined set of options:

Changing a field’s data type may affect any dashboards, visualizations, searches, alerts, optimizers, and integrations using that field.

Mapping errors

Your logs are mapped daily, and each field is assigned a Dynamic or Explicit data type.

Dynamic mappings are automatically determined as logs are received, meaning the fields' data type is known. When a field is marked as Explicit, its data type is unclear.

Mapping errors occur when different data types are sent to the same field. For example, if field weather receives the numeric value 35 and then gets the value hot, it'll result in a mapping error since the same field can't contain two different types of inputs.

The type field is changed to logzio-index-failure, and the tags field is added to the log to identify the issue.

When a specific log type encounters too many mapping parsing exceptions, the problematic field will either be eliminated or flatten and renamed by the support team.

If a field is removed, its data is stored in a new entry called logzio_removed_fields, which holds all removed entries for that log type and their corresponding values for reference.

Here are some of the common mapping errors you might encounter and why they happen:

MPE	Description
object mapping for [FIELD_NAME] tried to parse field [FIELD_NAME] as object, but found a concrete value	Field is mapped as a JSON object but is being sent as a string (or is being stringified by other means)
Can’t get text on a START_OBJECT	Field is mapped as a string, but is sent as a JSON object
failed to parse field [FIELD_NAME] of type [DATA_TYPE]	Field is being mapped as one data type but being sent as another
Index -1 out of bounds for length 0	A field exists in the log with a dot “.” in its name. For these cases, the system treats the field as an object when mapping it. For example: log.level, app.kubernetes, etc.
Numeric value (NUMBER) out of range of long (-9223372036854775808 - 9223372036854775807)	Field mapped as a number, but its value is outside the range of the “Long” data type
Object field starting or ending with a [.] makes object resolution ambiguous	Some fields in the logs contain invalid characters in the name. For example: . , , , _ , #

Mapping errors through sub accounts

When mapping errors occur in your account, you can only assign one data type per specific field.

However, sometimes you might want to assign multiple data types to the same field, which isn’t supported with Explore configuration. For these cases, you can create sub accounts.

You can use sub accounts to send the same field that’s already sent to any of your accounts but map it as a different data type.

For example, suppose you have a metadata field assigned as an Object in your production environment. In that case, you can assign it as a String in your testing environment by creating a sub account to which you’ll send the same logs.

Use sub accounts to adjust your mapping based on your monitoring needs.

Learn more about creating and managing sub accounts and about field mapping in your account.

Invalid logs

What causes an invalid log?

When a log that includes specific issues is received, the log is flattened and ingested, the type field is changed to logzio-invalid-log, and the tags field is added to the log to identify the issue.

Invalid log tags

The tags in the table below explain the character or field issues that may cause a log to be labeled with the logzio-invalid-log field.

Tag	Description
MAX_LOG_LINE_LENGTH	Exceeded the maximum of 500K characters per log
MAX_FIELD_KEY_SIZE -or- INVALID_FIELD_VALUE_LENGTH	Exceeded the maximum of 32700 characters per field
MAX_JSON_DEPTH	Exceeded the maximum of 10 field nesting levels per log message
MAX_FIELDS_NUMBER -or-< INVALID_FIELDS_NUMBER	Exceeded the maximum of 1000 fields per log message
FIELDS_MISSING	This error is related to required fields that are missing from your logs: For example, @timestamp. Check if the parsing rules remove or rename the relevant fields.
ARRAY_INDEX_OUT_OF_BOUNDS_EXCEPTION	One of the field names in the log has a dot (.) as a name: To resolve the issue, flatten the field that the . is nested under. If the field is inside an array, you'll need to flatten the array field. For example, you'd need to flatten the field xxx.yyy