NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra · error · ElasticException

Error querying vectorid: ${vectorid}

Error message

Error querying vectorid: ${vectorid}

What it means

In the similarity-query path, queryVectorIdMatch for a vector returns null (not an empty array), interpreted as a query-level error rather than 'no matches'. It throws ElasticException("Error querying vectorid: <id>").

Source

Thrown at Ghidra/Features/BSim/src/main/java/ghidra/features/bsim/query/elastic/ElasticDatabase.java:3308

		while (iter1.hasNext()) {
			fetchVectors(iter1, iter2, 50);						// Fetch vector associated with each vectorid
		}
		iter1 = vectorList.iterator();
		iter2 = vectorList.iterator();
		while (iter1.hasNext()) {
			fetchVectorCounts(iter1, iter2, MAX_VECTORCOUNT_WINDOW);	// Fetch hitcount of each vector
		}
		int count = 0;
		DescriptionManager manager = query.matchresponse.manage;
		for (VectorResult vecResult : vectorList) {
			if (count >= query.max) {
				break;
			}
			SignatureRecord srec = manager.newSignature(vecResult.vec, vecResult.hitcount);
			JsonArray descres;
			descres = queryVectorIdMatch(vecResult.vectorid, filter, query.max - count);
			if (descres == null) {
				throw new ElasticException(
					"Error querying vectorid: " + Long.toString(vecResult.vectorid));
			}
			if (descres.size() == 0) {
				if (filter != null) {
					continue; // Filter may have eliminated all results
				}
				// Otherwise this is a sign of corruption in the database
				throw new ElasticException(
					"No functions matching vectorid: " + Long.toString(vecResult.vectorid));
			}
			count += descres.size();
			convertDescriptionRows(null, descres, vecResult, manager, srec);
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Entry point for the Elasticsearch version of QueryDelete command:
	 *   Delete specific executables from the database

View on GitHub (pinned to d5f144c24d)

Solutions

1. Retry the query once (often transient).
2. Check ES cluster health and logs for the failing shard/request.
3. Re-ingest the affected executable if a specific vector is permanently broken.

Example fix

// before
Response resp = db.query(req); // surfaces opaque 'Error querying vectorid'
// after
Response resp = retryOn(() -> db.query(req), 3, ElasticException.class);

// Skip the query if the cluster is unhealthy.
if (!clusterHealthy()) throw new ServiceUnavailableException("Cluster unhealthy");

// Retry transient query failures a bounded number of times.
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
    try { return db.query(req); }
    catch (ElasticException e) {
        if (i == 2 || !isTransient(e.getMessage())) throw e;
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: A similarity query where fetching function descriptions for a specific vector id fails to yield a usable response (server error, malformed/empty response envelope).

Common situations: Transient ES errors; partial cluster outage; response-shape change after a server upgrade; overloaded cluster timing out one shard.

Related errors

• {getType()}scripts cannot be used for context [{context.name
• Unknown script name {scriptSource}
• Could not find hits document
• No functions matching vectorid:
• Multi-search for exe records failed

AI-assisted analysis of NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra@d5f144c24d (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e4446baf4276645d. Report an issue: GitHub.