Troubleshooting

Common errors, their causes, and solutions.

Token invalidation (401 vs 403)

HTTP 401 Bad Credentials

Symptom: Log shows 401 Bad Credentials for API calls.

Cause: The token is invalid, expired, or revoked.

Solution:

The key is permanently invalidated for the lifetime of the process. No action is needed during the current run – Aveloxis skips it automatically.
Check that the token is still valid on GitHub/GitLab.
If the token was rotated, add the new one:

aveloxis add-key ghp_new_token --platform github

Restart aveloxis serve to pick up the new key.

HTTP 403 Forbidden / Rate Limited

Symptom: Log shows 403 rate limit exceeded or 403 forbidden.

Cause: The token’s rate limit is exhausted, or the token lacks required scopes.

Solution:

Rate limit exhaustion is handled automatically. The key is skipped until its reset window.
If you see persistent 403 errors, check the token’s scopes. GitHub tokens need repo or public_repo scope. GitLab tokens need read_api.

FK constraint violations

Symptom: Log shows violates foreign key constraint warnings during processing.

Cause: Leftover staging data references entities that no longer exist, or processing order was interrupted.

Solution:

Stop the running instance:
```
aveloxis stop
```

Check if there is leftover staging data:

SELECT entity_type, COUNT(*)
FROM aveloxis_ops.staging
GROUP BY entity_type;

If staging is not empty, clear it:
```
TRUNCATE aveloxis_ops.staging;
```

Restart:

aveloxis serve --workers 4 --monitor :5555

Note

Normally, leftover staging data is processed on startup. Clearing staging only loses data that was already fetched from the API but not yet processed into relational tables. The next collection cycle will re-fetch it.

“No API keys configured” / Startup failure

Symptom: aveloxis serve or aveloxis collect exits immediately with "no API keys configured for any platform".

Cause: No API tokens were found in the database or config file. Aveloxis requires at least one GitHub or GitLab token to function.

Solution:

Add a token via the CLI:

aveloxis add-key ghp_your_github_token --platform github
aveloxis add-key glpat-your_gitlab_token --platform gitlab

Or add tokens directly to aveloxis.json:

{
  "github": { "api_keys": ["ghp_token1", "ghp_token2"] },
  "gitlab": { "api_keys": ["glpat-token1"] }
}

Restart:
```
aveloxis serve --workers 4
```

Note

If only GitHub tokens are configured, GitLab repos will not be collected (and vice versa). You will see a warning in the log: "no GitLab API keys configured — GitLab repos will not be collected".

“Commit resolution FAILED”

Symptom: Log shows level=ERROR msg="commit resolution FAILED (no API keys available — most commits unresolved)" with a large key_exhausted count.

Cause: The commit resolver needs GitHub API keys to resolve git commit emails to GitHub usernames. If the key pool is empty or all keys have been invalidated, the resolver cannot make API calls and aborts early.

Solution:

Check that you have valid API keys:

# Look for key loading at startup
grep "loaded.*keys" aveloxis.log

If no keys were loaded, see the “No API keys configured” section above.
If keys were loaded but all were invalidated, check for "API key invalidated" messages in the log. This usually means the tokens have been revoked or expired on GitHub.
The resolver uses noreply-email parsing and database lookups before making API calls, so it can still resolve many commits without API access. The key_exhausted count shows how many commits could not be resolved due to missing keys.

“No data collected”

Symptom: A repo completes collection but shows zero issues, PRs, and commits.

Causes:

No API keys loaded (see above) — the staged collection returns 0 items when the key pool is empty
Authentication failure (token not valid for this repo)
The repo is empty (no issues, PRs, or commits)
The repo is private and the token does not have access

Solution:

First check if keys loaded successfully at startup:
```
grep "loaded.*keys" aveloxis.log
```
Check logs at DEBUG level for the specific repo:
```
# In aveloxis.json, set "log_level": "debug"
```

Verify the token has access:

curl -H "Authorization: token ghp_your_token" \
  https://api.github.com/repos/owner/repo

If the repo is private, ensure the token has repo scope (not just public_repo).

`unsupported Unicode escape sequence (SQLSTATE 22P05)`

Symptom: Logs show flushing staging batch (500 rows): ERROR: unsupported Unicode escape sequence (SQLSTATE 22P05) and an entire batch of staged rows fails to flush.

Cause (pre-v0.16.8): PostgreSQL JSONB columns reject \u0000 escapes. GitHub and GitLab API responses occasionally include NUL bytes in text fields (bot-generated review comments, binary content echoed into diffs, malformed webhook payloads). A single poisoned row in a 500-row batch killed the whole flush.

Fix (v0.16.8+): db.StagingWriter.Stage now scrubs \u0000 from marshaled JSON before queuing the insert (db.sanitizeJSONForJSONB). The scrubber is a no-op on clean payloads (zero overhead) and drops the escape when present — NUL has no semantic value in any field we stage.

No operator action needed; the fix is automatic after upgrading and restarting aveloxis serve.

“Pull requests / contributors / events: not found” or “forbidden”

Symptom: Collection fails for certain repos with log lines like:

contributors: not found: https://api.github.com/repos/owner/name/contributors?per_page=100
pull requests: not found: https://api.github.com/repos/owner/name/pulls?state=all...
pull requests: forbidden: https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/group%2Fname/merge_requests?...

Cause (pre-v0.16.8): Any 404 or 403 on a per-phase endpoint appended an entry to result.Errors, which buildOutcome translated into success=false. Common triggers:

Repo has issues or PRs disabled in its settings (/issues or /pulls return 404).
Repo was deleted or transferred after it was queued.
GitLab project is private and the token lacks access (403 Forbidden on /merge_requests).
GitHub token doesn’t have repo scope for a private repo (403 on /contributors).

Fix (v0.16.8+): collector.isOptionalEndpointSkip(err) checks errors.Is(err, platform.ErrNotFound) and errors.Is(err, platform.ErrForbidden). Every phase in the staged collector now routes through it. A 404 or 403 logs one info line (skipping <phase> endpoint owner=... repo=... reason=...) and breaks out of that phase cleanly — the rest of the collection proceeds. The job is only marked failed on other errors (rate-limit exhaustion, auth failure, network problems, DB errors).

If you see these repos repeatedly skipping an endpoint, check:

-- Is the repo deleted/moved? Check recent prelim runs.
SELECT repo_id, repo_git, repo_archived, data_collection_date
FROM aveloxis_data.repos WHERE repo_git LIKE '%owner/name%';

To verify the token scope on GitHub:

curl -sI -H "Authorization: token $TOKEN" https://api.github.com/user | grep -i x-oauth-scopes

Release collection “not found” errors

Symptom: Logs show releases: not found: https://api.github.com/repos/owner/name.git/releases?per_page=100 and the repo is flagged as a failed collection.

Cause (pre-v0.16.4): Two issues compounded:

repo_name contained a trailing .git (from Augur import or an org-listing path that skipped URL parsing). Every API call using the slug (/releases, /issues, /pulls) returned 404.
The staged collector treated any error on ListReleases as a fatal collection error. buildOutcome flipped success to false on any result.Errors entry, so a single 404 killed the whole job.

Fix (v0.16.4):

model.NormalizeRepoName() is now called in db.UpsertRepo and db.UpdateRepoURL, and a one-time cleanupRepoNameGitSuffix migration strips .git from existing rows. Clean slugs hit the database on every write path.
platform.ErrNotFound wraps 404 responses. The staged collector and legacy collector both errors.Is(err, platform.ErrNotFound) around ListReleases — a 404 now logs no releases endpoint (404) — treating as zero releases and moves on.

Verifying the fix on an existing database:

-- Any repo_name still ending in ".git"? After running `aveloxis migrate`, zero rows.
SELECT repo_id, repo_owner, repo_name FROM aveloxis_data.repos WHERE repo_name LIKE '%.git';

If you see a repo still stuck in Error status for this reason, re-queue it:

UPDATE aveloxis_ops.collection_queue SET locked_at = NULL WHERE repo_id = ?;

Git clone exit status 128

Symptom: Log shows exit status 128 during the facade phase.

Cause: git clone --bare or git fetch failed. Common reasons:

The clone directory has an incomplete or corrupted bare clone from a previous crash
Disk full
Network issue during clone

Solution:

Aveloxis has built-in resilience: if git fetch fails on an existing clone, it deletes the clone and re-clones from scratch. If that also fails:

Check disk space:
```
df -h /path/to/repo_clone_dir
```
Check if the bare clone directory exists but is corrupt:
```
ls -la /path/to/repo_clone_dir/owner/repo.git/
```
Delete the corrupt clone and let Aveloxis re-clone:
```
rm -rf /path/to/repo_clone_dir/owner/repo.git
```

Re-prioritize the repo:

aveloxis prioritize https://github.com/owner/repo

Garbage timestamps (year 0001 BC)

Symptom: Queries return dates like 0001-01-01 00:00:00 BC or extremely old dates.

Cause: Some API responses contain uninitialized timestamp fields (e.g., zero-value Go time.Time is year 1 CE, which PostgreSQL stores as year 1).

Solution:

Run migrations to clean up:

aveloxis migrate

The migrate command includes a data cleanup pass that detects and nullifies garbage timestamps (year < 1970) across all tables. This is idempotent and safe to run on an existing database.

Schema version mismatch warning

Symptom: aveloxis web or aveloxis api logs a warning at startup:

WARN schema version mismatch: database schema is behind the binary
     db_schema_version=0.14.4 binary_version=0.14.5
     action="run 'aveloxis migrate' or restart 'aveloxis serve'"

Cause: The binary was updated but the database schema hasn’t been migrated yet. This happens when you update the aveloxis binary and restart web or api without restarting serve (which auto-migrates) or running migrate.

Solution:

Run migrations explicitly, or restart the serve process:

aveloxis migrate          # explicit migration
# or
aveloxis stop serve && aveloxis start serve   # serve auto-migrates on startup

Null byte errors in text fields

Symptom: PostgreSQL error invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0x00.

Cause: Some API responses (especially bot-generated content or binary data pasted into issues) contain null bytes, which PostgreSQL TEXT columns cannot store.

Solution:

This should not occur in normal operation – Aveloxis sanitizes all text fields before insertion, removing:

Null bytes (\x00)
Invalid UTF-8 sequences
Control characters (C0: 0x01-0x1F except tab/newline/CR; C1: 0x7F-0x9F)

If you see this error, it indicates a code path that bypasses sanitization. Report it as a bug.

Restart procedure

The standard restart procedure for any issue:

# 1. Stop all running instances
aveloxis stop all

# 2. (Optional) Clear staging if you suspect corrupt staged data
psql -U aveloxis -d aveloxis -c "TRUNCATE aveloxis_ops.staging;"

# 3. Restart all components in the background
aveloxis start all

On startup, Aveloxis automatically:

Processes any leftover staged data
Releases stale queue locks
Resumes collection from the queue

Checking queue status

Via the dashboard

Open http://localhost:5555 to see the full queue state.

Via psql

-- Summary
SELECT status, COUNT(*)
FROM aveloxis_ops.collection_queue
GROUP BY status;

-- Stale locks (locked more than 1 hour ago)
SELECT q.repo_id, r.repo_owner, r.repo_name, q.locked_at
FROM aveloxis_ops.collection_queue q
JOIN aveloxis_data.repos r ON r.repo_id = q.repo_id
WHERE q.status = 'collecting'
  AND q.locked_at < NOW() - INTERVAL '1 hour';

Via the REST API

curl http://localhost:5555/api/stats

Changed `days_until_recollect` is being ignored

Symptom: You edited collection.days_until_recollect in aveloxis.json (e.g., 1 → 7), restarted aveloxis serve, and repos are still being re-collected on the old schedule.

Cause (pre-v0.16.6): CompleteJob sets collection_queue.due_at = NOW() + days_until_recollect at the moment a collection finishes. That value is frozen in the row — changing the config later has no effect on queued rows until each repo next completes a collection under the new setting. With a fleet of thousands of repos that each completed yesterday under days_until_recollect=1, the stale due_at values are all already due when you restart, and the scheduler picks them right back up regardless of the new 7.

Fix (v0.16.6+): The scheduler now calls store.RealignDueDates(ctx, recollectAfter) once on startup, which recomputes due_at = last_collected + recollectAfter for every queued row with a non-null last_collected. Look for the log line:

realigned queue due_at from current days_until_recollect rows_updated=3079 recollect_after=168h0m0s

'collecting' rows (in-flight) and never-collected rows (last_collected IS NULL) are skipped. The operation is idempotent — repeated restarts that don’t change the config are no-ops.

Verifying on a live database:

SELECT repo_id,
       due_at,
       last_collected,
       (due_at - last_collected) AS cooldown
FROM aveloxis_ops.collection_queue
WHERE status = 'queued' AND last_collected IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY last_collected DESC
LIMIT 10;

The cooldown column should equal your configured days_until_recollect (as an interval) after a successful restart.

If you want to force a one-shot re-queue despite the cooldown, use aveloxis prioritize <url> or the “Prioritize” button in the web UI — that explicitly sets due_at = NOW() for a single repo.

Checking collection status

To see what was collected for a specific repo:

-- Entity counts
SELECT
  r.repo_owner || '/' || r.repo_name AS repo,
  (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM aveloxis_data.issues i WHERE i.repo_id = r.repo_id) AS issues,
  (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM aveloxis_data.pull_requests p WHERE p.repo_id = r.repo_id) AS prs,
  (SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT cmt_commit_hash) FROM aveloxis_data.commits c WHERE c.repo_id = r.repo_id) AS commits,
  (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM aveloxis_data.messages m WHERE m.repo_id = r.repo_id) AS messages
FROM aveloxis_data.repos r
WHERE r.repo_git LIKE '%chaoss/augur%';

Re-running a failed repo

If a repo’s collection failed and you want to retry immediately:

aveloxis prioritize https://github.com/owner/repo

This sets priority to 0 and due time to now. The scheduler picks it up next.

For a full historical re-collection (ignoring the incremental window):

aveloxis collect --full https://github.com/owner/repo

Dead repo sidelining and un-sidelining

How sidelining works

When the prelim phase detects a 404/410 response:

The repo is marked repo_archived = TRUE
It is removed from the collection queue
All previously collected data is preserved

Un-sidelining a repo

If a repo comes back (e.g., was temporarily private), you can un-sideline it:

-- Un-sideline the repo
UPDATE aveloxis_data.repos
SET repo_archived = FALSE
WHERE repo_git = 'https://github.com/owner/repo';

Then re-add it to the queue:

aveloxis add-repo https://github.com/owner/repo

List all sidelined repos

SELECT repo_id, repo_owner, repo_name, repo_git
FROM aveloxis_data.repos
WHERE repo_archived = TRUE
ORDER BY repo_owner, repo_name;

Gateway errors (502/503/504)

Symptom: Log shows repeated 502, 503, or 504 errors.

Cause: GitHub or GitLab service degradation.

Solution: No action needed. Aveloxis automatically retries with exponential backoff and jitter:

Base delays: 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s
Random jitter added to each delay
Up to 10 retries before giving up on that request
Context-aware (respects shutdown signals)

If the service outage is prolonged, the repo will fail after 10 retries and be re-queued for the next collection cycle.

Deadlock errors

Symptom: Log shows ERROR: deadlock detected (SQLSTATE 40P01).

Cause: Concurrent writes to the same rows (rare, usually during high-concurrency processing).

Solution: No action needed. All database upserts use exponential backoff retry on deadlock errors, up to 10 attempts. The operation is retried transparently.

Next steps

Monitoring – use the dashboard for real-time status
Commands Reference – CLI command details
Collection Pipeline – understand what each phase does

Troubleshooting

Token invalidation (401 vs 403)

HTTP 401 Bad Credentials

HTTP 403 Forbidden / Rate Limited

FK constraint violations

“No API keys configured” / Startup failure

“Commit resolution FAILED”

“No data collected”

unsupported Unicode escape sequence (SQLSTATE 22P05)

“Pull requests / contributors / events: not found” or “forbidden”

Release collection “not found” errors

Git clone exit status 128

Garbage timestamps (year 0001 BC)

Schema version mismatch warning

Null byte errors in text fields

Restart procedure

Checking queue status

Via the dashboard

Via psql

Via the REST API

Changed days_until_recollect is being ignored

Checking collection status

Re-running a failed repo

Dead repo sidelining and un-sidelining

How sidelining works

Un-sidelining a repo

List all sidelined repos

Gateway errors (502/503/504)

Deadlock errors

Next steps

`unsupported Unicode escape sequence (SQLSTATE 22P05)`

Changed `days_until_recollect` is being ignored