"Message search initialisation failed, check your settings for more information"

[nyanpasu64]

Steps to reproduce

1. Open an encrypted chat in the People category.
2. Click the search button.

What happened?

What did you expect?

Search works.

What happened?

I see a message saying "Message search initialisation failed, check your settings for more information".

Operating system

Windows 10 x64

Application version

Element version: 1.8.2, Olm version: 3.2.3

How did you install the app?

winget install element, subsequently upgraded within Element

Homeserver

matrix.org

Have you submitted a rageshake?

No

[germain-gg]

Thank you for raising this issue, Could you go in your settings and report the error message mentioned there?

Should probably be mitigated by #18164

[G2G2G2G]

Thank you for raising this issue, Could you go in your settings and report the error message mentioned there?

Should probably be mitigated by #18164

Next time tell him where the hell to find the error because it isn't intuitive at all.

Error opening the database: IndexError(IOError(IOError { path: None, err: Custom { kind: Other, error: "Invalid MAC" } }))

Also note this happens in e2e rooms only, and the NON ENCRYPTED MESSAGES do appear in those rooms (for example I sent POST requests via a bot into the room ID and those are (red alarm marked as non-encrypted) they appear via the search fine but no other post does. The error shows up regardless if the bot is in the room or not.. it shows up in all e2e rooms.

This error appeared last few months, some of my rooms are year+ old and worked fine until month ago or more no idea.. now they do not.

[nyanpasu64]

Next time tell him where the hell to find the error because it isn't intuitive at all.

them*

Also the error is: Error opening the database: SqlCipherError("Sqlcipher support is missing")

But yes, the error message needs to be presented better to the user. If this is an Arch Linux packaging error, perhaps Element should check for Sqlcipher up front, and refuse to launch (or popup a dialog on startup) saying it's missing, so the Arch packagers won't ship a subtly broken package.

---

The weird thing is that I already have sqlcipher-4.4.3-1 installed, since the element-desktop package already requires sqlcipher... but it still fails to load.

[G2G2G2G]

Could be an arch issue, I am using https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/element-desktop-nightly-bin/ with a different error message (as posted above) however both are related to search..

@anoadragon453 (assuming it's the same person) said

Element Desktop supports searching messages locally in encrypted rooms through something called seshat, which is bundled in the debian package. Seshat has a runtime dependency on libsqlcipher, and Element Desktop will print the following error upon startup if libsqlcipher is not found:

~ >>> element-desktop-nightly
Seshat unexpected error: Error: libsqlcipher.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Installing the sqlcipher package from the community repo solves this error and enables encrypted message search. I recommend adding it as a dependency of this package.

3.34.1 2021-01-20 14:10:07 10e20c0b43500cfb9bbc0eaa061c57514f715d87238f4d835880cd846b9ealt1 (SQLCipher 4.4.3 community)

I also have it looks like

[germain-gg]

Could you both try to "reset" the message index? You might experience a suboptimal search experience whilst seshat crawls through the sync history, but it will eventually catch up to the state it was on

It would be interesting to see whether Element can recover and initialise seshat properly. If that's the case, it could indicate a race condition during the first initialisation phase. Otherwise it could be a packaging issue

[nyanpasu64]

I tried clicking Reset, and the settings page didn't change except for a spinner, and trying to open search still popped up "Message search initialisation failed". When I closed and reopened the Settings page, I still see "Message search initialisation failed", but the settings shows an Enable button instead, and clicking it didn't do anything immediately (but create a spinner).

When I try clicking the Enable button, the dev tools shows error:

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read property 'addInitialCheckpoints' of null
    at EventIndexPanel.tsx:129

The rageshake.tar file shows EventIndex: Error initializing the event index {"message":"Error opening the database: SqlCipherError(\"Sqlcipher support is missing\")"} in the most recent log-0.log file, even though this message no longer appears on the GUI.

[G2G2G2G]

@gsouquet tbh didn't even know this section of settings existed, would have clicked that earlier

Main page goes to:

Securely cache encrypted messages locally for them to appear in search results, using 2 MB to store messages from 22 rooms.

When you click "manage" it shows: (by default it was 3000ms but I set it to 500)

It's still going but it looks like my searches are working, none report and error.

Space used: 89 MB
Indexed messages: 75,784
Indexed rooms: 23 out of 24

So at some point my indexes broke and they weren't able to fix themselves?

And nyan's stuff.. just can't find sqlcipher I guess?

[mrambossek]

So at some point my indexes broke and they weren't able to fix themselves?

does your search actually find stuff from e2e channels now, though? i had a similar issue, was able to fix it by clicking reset, but search simply wont find content from e2e channels now, even though the counter says i have thousands of messages indexed. words in non-e2e channels can be found fine. (yes i did wait for it to finish indexing and tried restarting element-desktop several times etc etc... doesn't matter)

[G2G2G2G]

does your search actually find stuff from e2e channels now, though?

Yes that is what "looks like my searches are working" means make sure the sqlcipher is installed (if you're on linux) no idea from there, mine is working fine now.

[G2G2G2G]

Looks like it broke again lmao

Error opening the database: SqlCipherError("Sqlcipher support is missing")

reindexing fixed it again...

hahah nvm it just broke again and now it hangs on forever. I've recompiled it too and it does it still so whatever I'll leave it for a night maybe it is indexing.. but barely any cpu/disk usage compared to last time.

[msrd0]

I have exactly the same problem as @G2G2G2G. I couldn't search messages, tried to reset the index and now it cannot be recreated. I've installed element through the official ArchLinux packages.

[nyanpasu64]

The Arch bug is being tracked at https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/72359, which references https://github.com/matrix-org/seshat/issues/102 (probably the same bug reported in a different tracker). However it doesn't seem fixed yet.

[G2G2G2G]

Leaving it on all night (like I said in last comment) didn't do anything.

Also if it helps anyone get to the bottom of it: I've recreated it on manjaro too (idk how similar the distros are or whatever)

This is the error clicking the "enable" (button above in screenshot) produces

[dkasak]

Note that if you're seeing Message search initialisation failed (and Error opening the database: SqlCipherError("Sqlcipher support is missing") when expanded), then this is likely about https://github.com/matrix-org/seshat/issues/102. If you're seeing something else, then you're likely encountering a different bug.

For https://github.com/matrix-org/seshat/issues/102, a temporary workaround, which works for Arch at least, can be found here. This workaround will be applied to the Arch package (or has been already) so that you don't need to do it manually, but it might be useful for other affected distributions.

[G2G2G2G]

@dkasak thanks worked for me with my error of not being able to click the "enable" button (which was underlying sqlcipher issue as we know from previously)

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libsqlcipher.so exec "/opt/Element-Nightly/element-desktop-nightly" --disable-dev-mode "$@"

(I'm using https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/element-desktop-nightly-bin/ )

[dud1337]

I have this issue on debian testing with element 1.10.1. With the following error message:

Error opening the database: DatabaseUnlockError("Invalid passphrase")

I did not have this issue on debian bullseye on element 1.9.9 and 1.10.1. Might try W10 later.

[viasux]

I have this issue too. Arch Linux, Element version: 1.10.15 Olm version: 3.2.8

[dolfies]

Also have this issue. Windows version: Windows 11 Insider Preview (25140.1000) Element version: 1.10.15 Olm version: 3.2.8

[dud1337]

This https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/14229#issuecomment-745276193 worked for me as a temporary fix, but one must wait for reindexing.

[HammyHavoc]

Having this problem too. Using Element on Windows 11.

[carnifexx]

the search was always completely broken for the windows app. it can't find even a single or any messaged word directly shown below. at least in the webapp you can use the browser search, i assume, but here it doesn't even begin to search any of the words already shown.

[viasux]

the search was always completely broken for the windows app. it can't find even a single or any messaged word directly shown below. at least in the webapp you can use the browser search, i assume, but here it doesn't even begin to search any of the words already shown.

funny, for me it only worked on my windows install

[jxu]

I have this issue as well on Ubuntu 22.04 Element version: 1.10.15 Olm version: 3.2.8

I pressed the reset button and it seems to be recaching my messages correctly for search.

[KeenMaron]

Have the same issue. Sometimes it works, but in the most use cases it does not.

Windows 10 Version Element: 1.11.8 Version Olm: 3.2.12

[Polve]

I have the same problem with v1.11.12 on ubuntu 22.04

I've not understood if there is workaround

[dkasak]

@Polve, see https://github.com/matrix-org/seshat/issues/102#issuecomment-943311270 for the only known workaround.

[bdrewery]

The EventStore directory on Windows does not respect the --profile flag. It uses the default profile directory/EventStore. After deleting that one then the 2nd profile search was able to initialize for me.

[t3chguy]

@bdrewery good spot, just made a PR to ensure EventStore is maintained per-profile