filtering for older-than events with relative time does not work

[restena-sw]

Describe the bug

Time-based filters take the operators <, <= and >, >= and the value can be an absolute or relative time.

Using an absolute time for the filter value always works correctly. E.g. querying for

Service Time Last Ok >= 2024-01-01 selects all services that were OK sometime this year; and the complement
Service Time Last Ok < 2024-01-01 selects all services that were not in OK state this year, but earlier

Using a relative time for the filter value works only for > and >=; it always yields 0 results when attempted with < and <=. E.g. querying for

Service Time Last Ok >= 9m selects all services that were OK sometime in the last nine months; but the complement
Service Time Last Ok < 9m selects nothing.

I also tried "-9m", "9 months" and "-9 months"; none of which produced the desired result.

The use case for such relative-time filter strings is the creation of a dashlet that shows problems that persist for a long time.

To Reproduce

For a given set of services with issues, find a point in time that has start/resolve occurences before and after that point in time. Then filter as discussed above using a relative time string to express the chosen point in time.

Expected behavior

The behaviour should be identical for absolute time and relative time values pointing to the same moment in time.

Screenshots

Can add some (redacted for privacy) if needed; I hope I'm clear enough with words.

Your Environment

• Icinga Web 2 version and modules (System - About): 2.9 (but confirmed in a 2.12 that relative time still does not work, maybe in a different way)
• Web browser used: Chromiusm 128
• Icinga 2 version used (icinga2 --version): 2.13.2, OS package
• Server operating system and version: CentOS 7 (now Suse Liberty Linux 7)

[nilmerg]

Hi,

9m is an invalid value. Try 9 minutes.

To see what's working, try https://strtotime.co.uk/

Though, we are aware that this is far from being useful and there is a proper UI validation/assistance required.

[restena-sw]

I did try "x timespan" like as I wrote initially. So here are the screenshots with a "2 weeks" filter proving that it does not work:

• filtering for <= and an absolute time working fine, showing various hits for "old" issues:
  

• filtering with <= and both "2 weeks" and "-2 weeks" not showing any results

I have verified that "2 weeks" and "-2 weeks" are vaild expressions; the "-2 weeks" should be the one delivering the expected results.

Please re-open this issue report.

[nilmerg]

Ah, strtotime transformation isn't enabled for any of the service_last_time_* columns. You'll have to stick to absolute values for now, though.