Cannot create remote index pattern when no other index exists

[dimitris-athanasiou]

Steps to reproduce

1. Create 2 elasticsearch clusters, say "a" and "b"
2. Index some data in cluster "b" (cluster "a" should have no user created indices)
3. Setup "a" cluster to see "b" as a remote cluster
4. Launch kibana for cluster "a"
5. Go to index management

Observed behaviour

Notice that kibana does not let you type an index pattern saying there's no data. It is possible to work around this by clicking on include system indices. However, it feels wrong that users have to click on include system indices especially since it's recommended as good practice to have a CCS dedicated cluster (so it'll probably have no user indices).

[cjcenizal]

@dimitris-athanasiou Which branch/version are you on?

[spalger]

@cjcenizal I've confirmed it in master

[chrisronline]

Related to #13689

We originally did the initial fetch call to support CCS (*:*) but removed it to avoid the page not working at all for certain users.

I'm not sure what we can really do here, but an easy workaround is to search for *:*.

If there is a way to detect a CCS environment from ES, we might be able to fire off a call and change the initial query based on the response. Or perhaps we can add an advanced setting that indices the default search query for index pattern creation.

cc @skearns64

[danopia]

Just ran into this. I worked around by creating a temporary index, didn't see the show-system checkbox.

I don't know about Kibana's specifics, but hitting the Remote Cluster Info API pretty quickly tells you if in fact there are remote clusters configured. Or, if the *:* call is too slow, kick it off async and update the page if it turns out there's results?

Using docker.elastic.co/kibana/kibana-oss:6.2.2

[mattkime]

I see two different levels of addressing this -

1. If there are remotes, simply allow entry of an index pattern

2. Display indices from remotes. Paginating results from multiple sources might be troublesome.