Question : Why does the report generation not complete even though the number of records involved are less (< 50k)
Environment Information : Clearpass 6.3.1 or Clearpass 6.2.x
Symptoms : Once we start running a report, it never completes even after 10-12 hours. Doing a search from insight module reveals that there are very less number of records (10-50k entries) which are involved in the report generation process. However even with just 4 entries in the report, the report never completes.
Cause : In clearpass, reports are generated as HTML, CSV and PDF formats. The process to generate PDF makes an internal https call to a certain script with the cluster username and password. Now if the cluster username or password contains certain special characters like "$", this internal https call fails and the pdf generation errors out without notifying the report generation process about the error.
This causes the report generation to continue infinitely.
Resolution : Ensure that cluster password does not contain special characters, especially "$" ("#" has been found to work without issues in the cluster password).
Upgrade to clearpass 6.3.5 where this issue has been addressed.
Answer : Change the cluster password to one without any special characters and reboot the server.