Unable to search for users in Enterprise PKS Harbor when there are more than 500 users added

Products

• VMware Cloud PKS

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Unable to search for some users in Enterprise PKS Harbor, hence there is no ability to make the user an admin from Harbor GUI
• Issue is seen when there are more than 500 users added to Harbor
• You can login to Harbor with the same user without any issue

Environment

VMware PKS 1.x

Resolution

This is a known issue with Enterprise PKS Harbor version v1.7 and v1.8, currently there is no resolution.

Workaround:
As a workaround, if you want to make any user as admin, the following workaround can be use to manually update the admin flag in the Harbor database.

Note: Editing the database directly can have catastrophic effects if mistakes are made. Ensure there is a backup or a snapshot of the Harbor VM prior to proceeding. 

1. SSH into the Harbor VM by executing a command similar to the following:

bosh -d harbor-container-registry-93fc2d7cf1ddf030f706 ssh

Note: replace the deployment ID value with the correct one returned by the bosh deployments command.

2. Switch to the root user account by issuing the sudo -i command.
3. Set the docker environment alias by running the following command:

alias docker='/var/vcap/packages/docker/bin/docker -H unix:///var/vcap/sys/run/docker/dockerd.sock'

4. Login to the harbor-db container by running the following command:

docker exec -it harbor-db bash

5. Connect to the database by running  the following commands:

psql -U postgres -d registry

6. Run the a command similar to the following to get the user id for the affected user by running

select user_id,username from harbor_user where username like 'rka%';

Notes: Replace rka with the first few characters of the username you are searching for. You will see output similar to the following:

 user_id | username
---------+----------
     572 | rkadmin

Note: Make a note of the user_id value as it will be used in the next step.

7. Issue a command similar to the following to make the user an admin user:

update harbor_user set sysadmin_flag='t' where user_id = '572'

Note: Replace 572 with the value returned for user_id in Step 6.

8. Type \q to exit the psql utility. Type exit three times to completely log out of the Harbor VM.

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
Unable to search and find some users when there is more than 500 users