What causes "duration Minimum is above Maximum" in jaegertracing/jaeger?

Swap the values so DurationMin <= DurationMax.

duration Minimum is above Maximum

Error message

duration Minimum is above Maximum

What it means

ErrDurationMinGreaterThanMax is a sentinel error returned by validateQuery when a trace query's minimum duration is greater than its maximum duration. Such a range filter (duration_min > duration_max) can never match any span, so the reader rejects it before querying Elasticsearch. It is asserted in TestTraceQueryParameterValidation as part of the documented validation contract.

Source

Thrown at internal/storage/v2/elasticsearch/tracestore/core/reader.go:59

	objectProcessTagsField = "process.tag"
	nestedTagsField        = "tags"
	nestedProcessTagsField = "process.tags"
	nestedLogFieldsField   = "logs.fields"
	tagKeyField            = "key"
	tagValueField          = "value"
	errorTag               = "error"

	defaultSearchDepth = 100

	DawnOfTimeSpanAge = time.Hour * 24 * 365 * 50
)

var (
	// ErrStartTimeMinGreaterThanMax occurs when start time min is above start time max
	ErrStartTimeMinGreaterThanMax = errors.New("start Time Minimum is above Maximum")

	// ErrDurationMinGreaterThanMax occurs when duration min is above duration max
	ErrDurationMinGreaterThanMax = errors.New("duration Minimum is above Maximum")

	// ErrMalformedRequestObject occurs when a request object is nil
	ErrMalformedRequestObject = errors.New("malformed request object")

	// ErrStartAndEndTimeNotSet occurs when start time and end time are not set
	ErrStartAndEndTimeNotSet = errors.New("start and End Time must be set")

	// ErrUnableToFindTraceIDAggregation occurs when an aggregation query for TraceIDs fail.
	ErrUnableToFindTraceIDAggregation = errors.New("could not find aggregation of traceIDs")

	defaultMaxDuration = model.DurationAsMicroseconds(time.Hour * 24)

	objectTagFieldList = []string{objectTagsField, objectProcessTagsField}

	nestedTagFieldList = []string{nestedTagsField, nestedProcessTagsField, nestedLogFieldsField}

	_ Reader = (*SpanReader)(nil) // check API conformance
)

View on GitHub (pinned to 806f444784)

Solutions

Swap the values so DurationMin <= DurationMax.
Validate the duration ordering in your caller before building TraceQueryParameters.
If only one bound is needed, leave the other at its zero value instead of duplicating a bound.

Example fix

// before
params := v2api.TraceQueryParameters{DurationMin: 3600e6, DurationMax: 60e6}
// after
if params.DurationMin > params.DurationMax {
    params.DurationMin, params.DurationMax = params.DurationMax, params.DurationMin
}

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

func validateDurationRange(p *api.TraceQueryParameters) error {
    if p.DurationMin > 0 && p.DurationMax > 0 && p.DurationMin > p.DurationMax {
        p.DurationMin, p.DurationMax = p.DurationMax, p.DurationMin
    }
    return nil
}

Try / catch

ids, err := reader.FindTraceIDs(ctx, query)
if errors.Is(err, core.ErrDurationMinGreaterThanMax) {
    return http.StatusBadRequest // inverted duration bounds
}

Prevention

Clamp or swap duration bounds at the boundary where user input enters your code.
Keep durations in one unit (e.g. time.Duration) until serialization to avoid unit mix-ups.
Set only the bound you need; leave the other zero instead of duplicating.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling reader.FindTraceIDs/FindTraces with TraceQueryParameters where DurationMin > DurationMax (e.g. DurationMin=1h, DurationMax=1m). validateQuery performs this comparison after the start-time checks and returns this error.

Common situations: UIs letting users set 'slower than X' and 'faster than Y' bounds without checking ordering; unit mix-ups (milliseconds vs microseconds) producing inverted bounds; copy-paste errors when filling query structs.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid query parameter" / "Failed to parse value of ...": fixing bad query string parameters across APIs — this error's family across 36 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of jaegertracing/jaeger@806f444784 (2026-09-01). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d3383508ef78e119. Report an issue: GitHub.