bug: events are not showing up in any dropdown or searches

[tanmoysrt]

Bug Description

We have a self-hosted posthog instance (PostHog Git SHA - 5adf41e).
In activity pages, we can see the incoming events and event types as well.

But while creating insights in dashboard, the dropdown to select event is blank.
It's happenning on the activity page's Select an event dropdown as well.

How to reproduce

1. Go to dashboard

2. Try to create an insight

3. In the event selection dropdown it's showing up no events

   

Additional context

1. In our posthog instance, there are already various events, checked in data warehouse and in activity page (/project/1/activity/explore)

   

2. We have checked the API call as well, it returning blank results
   Request -

   https://<posthog_instance>/api/projects/1/event_definitions?event_type=event&search=&limit=100&offset=0
   

   Response -

   {
    "count": 0,
    "next": null,
    "previous": null,
    "results": []
   }

Debug info

• PostHog Cloud, Debug information: [please copy/paste from https://us.posthog.com/settings/project-details#variables or https://eu.posthog.com/settings/project-details#variables]
• PostHog Hobby self-hosted with docker compose, version/commit: 5adf41e
• PostHog self-hosted with Kubernetes (deprecated, see Sunsetting Kubernetes support), version/commit: [please provide]

[kenz16]

I face the same problem. and still struggling how to solve the issue.. please help us posthog team
Thanks in advance

[DavidKuennen]

Having the same issue.

[SanchoKrancho]

Having the same issue too.

[harblaith7]

Lol are they gonna fix this? Product is unusable otherwise

[tooonuch]

Having the same issue :(

[ershisan99]

Same issue for us, this didn't help: #25125

[tooonuch]

I found a "workaround", which is a pain to implement especially if you have a lot of events, but it sort of works and allows you to create at least some insights.

1. Go to "activity" ("explore" tab)
2. find an event you need in the table
3. click on three dots
4. click on "create action from event"
5. In the insights go to actions instead of events, use the one you just created

[pedromcunha]

Happening too for us, the workaround mentioned above works but is pretty tedious.

[tanmoysrt]

Thanks @ershisan99 , the solution in #25125 has worked for me.

In my docker-compose.yml file, I have added this part

property-defs-rs:
    image: ghcr.io/posthog/posthog/property-defs-rs:master
    restart: on-failure
    environment:
        DATABASE_URL: 'postgres://posthog:posthog@db:5432/posthog'
        KAFKA_HOSTS: 'kafka:9092'
        SKIP_WRITES: 'false'
        SKIP_READS: 'false'
        FILTER_MODE: 'opt_out'
        CAPTURE_MODE: 'events'

    depends_on:
        - db
        - kafka

Then, restart all the containers.
It hadn't added events from old data.
But, once any event are recording in activity, it's getting added in events list.

[ershisan99]

Thanks @ershisan99 , the solution in #25125 has worked for me.

In my docker-compose.yml file, I have added this part

property-defs-rs:
    image: ghcr.io/posthog/posthog/property-defs-rs:master
    restart: on-failure
    environment:
        DATABASE_URL: 'postgres://posthog:posthog@db:5432/posthog'
        KAFKA_HOSTS: 'kafka:9092'
        SKIP_WRITES: 'false'
        SKIP_READS: 'false'
        FILTER_MODE: 'opt_out'
        CAPTURE_MODE: 'events'

    depends_on:
        - db
        - kafka

Then, restart all the containers. It hadn't added events from old data. But, once any event are coming in activity, it's getting added in events list.

Damn, I'm really glad it worked for you, but I'm really pissed it hasn't for me. They're just not getting added no matter what, even though new events are coming through...

[tanmoysrt]

@ershisan99
It wasn't working for me either.

• I have upgraded posthog to latest version using that upgrade script https://posthog.com/docs/self-host#upgrading
• In the issue suggestion, that depends_on part was missing. Without that property-defs-rs container's process just failed because kafka isn't ready and kafka container takes significant amount of time to start working. After adding that depends_on parameter and restarting the containers, it started working.

After these two changes, it started working.

[ershisan99]

@ershisan99 It wasn't working for me either.

• I have upgraded posthog to latest version using that upgrade script https://posthog.com/docs/self-host#upgrading
• In the issue suggestion, that depends_on part was missing, without that property-defs-rs container's process just failed because kafka isn't ready and kafka container takes significant amount of time to start working. After adding that depends_on parameter and restarting the containers, it started working.

After these two changes, it started working.

You sir are a gentleman and a scholar!
I was missing the depends_on part, it's working just fine now.

Thanks!

[tooonuch]

@tanmoysrt sorry to bug you, by restart - you mean docker compose up -d, or docker restart $(docker ps -q)? I assume compose, right?

[tanmoysrt]

@tooonuch
I have just restarted all the containers by docker compose restart.
But after adding that part in compose, docker compose up -d also should work.

[tooonuch]

yaaaay, it's working! Thanks to everyone and especially @tanmoysrt for helping in getting this fixed!

[ershisan99]

I wouldn't consider the issue resolve though, the docker-compose file is essentially broken and does not work as it's supposed to

[tooonuch]

yeah, this is definitely still a bug, I guess if you upgraded the docker file would get overwritten and the issue would return, as would this one which is also fixable with a docker file mod