"An error occurred while reading the current status from the server." message on attempting to load deployment's history tab.

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• On upgrade to vRealize automation 7.5 and higher an attempt to view a deployments history tab may result in the error

"An error occurred while reading the curent status from the server."

• The issue only affects deployments provisioned prior to the upgrade.
• The vRA appliance logfile /var/log/vmware/vcac/catalina.out shows exceptions similar to:

[UTC:2019-03-12 09:39:00,353 Local:2019-03-12 10:39:00,353] vcac: [component="cafe:approvals" priority="ERROR" thread="tomcat-http--27" tenant="tenant1" context="rrgr4sn5" parent="rrgr4sn5" token="8hHmIWL9"] com.vmware.vcac.platform.service.rest.resolver.ApplicationExceptionHandler.handleUnexpectedException:872 - Null value was assigned to a property [class com.vmware.vcac.core.approvals.domain.evaluation.Approval.cancelled] of primitive type setter of com.vmware.vcac.core.approvals.domain.evaluation.Approval.cancelled; nested exception is org.hibernate.PropertyAccessException: Null value was assigned to a property [class com.vmware.vcac.core.approvals.domain.evaluation.Approval.cancelled] of primitive
type setter of com.vmware.vcac.core.approvals.domain.evaluation.Approval.cancelled

Caused by: org.hibernate.PropertyAccessException: Null value was assigned to a property [class com.vmware.vcac.core.approvals.domain.evaluation.Approval.cancelled] of primitive type setter of com.vmware.vcac.core.approvals.domain.evaluation.Approval.cancelled

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Can not set boolean field com.vmware.vcac.core.approvals.domain.evaluation.Approval.cancelled to null value

Environment

VMware vRealize Automation 7.6.x
VMware vRealize Automation 7.5.x

Cause

The cancelled column was introduced to the vRA postgres schema in the vRealize Automation 7.5 release.

This column supports only boolean data type values, so true/false.

Deployments provisioned prior to vRealize Automation 7.5 will have this column value set to 'NULL' on upgrade.

Resolution

As a precaution best practise dictates you first snapshot the vRealize Automation appliances and manually backup the postgres database. 

To resolve change the cancelled column value from 'NULL' value to 'false':

1. SSH/Putty to the main vRA appliance.

2. Connect to the postgres database:
 

/opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/psql vcac postgres

3. Run the below PSQL queries

UPDATE requesteditemapproval SET cancelled = false where cancelled IS NULL;
UPDATE approval SET cancelled = false where cancelled IS NULL;

4. Confirm that the history tab of the deployments is now visible