Some searches for user and operational attributes fail, if denormalizeOpAttrsEnabled is enabled

• Key: DIRSERVER-804
• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Resolution: Fixed
• Priority: Minor
• Assignee: Emmanuel Lecharny
• Reporter: Stefan Zoerner
• Affects Version/s: 1.0.1, 1.0

Environment

* ApacheDS 1.0.1 (SNAPSHOT)
* Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_07-b03)
* Windows XP Professional SP2

Description

If the property denormalizeOpAttrsEnabled is enabled in the server.xml configuration,
    <property name="denormalizeOpAttrsEnabled"><value>true</value></property>
some searches cause unknown errors.
Here is an example:

$ ldapsearch -h localhost -p 10389 -D "uid=admin,ou=system" -w secret -b "ou=system" -s base "(ObjectClass=*)" * +
ldap_search: Unknown error
$

If the attribute sets "+" and "*" are used alone, no error occurs. And if denormalizeOpAttrsEnabled is set to false (which is the default), no error occurs as well with the "* +" combination.

After a change in the logging configuration, I learned that deep in the OperationalAttributeService, a runtime exception occurs:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Cannot add duplicate to unordered attribute
at javax.naming.directory.BasicAttribute.set(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.operational.OperationalAttributeService.denormalizeEntryOpAttrs(OperationalAttributeService.java:382)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.operational.OperationalAttributeService.filterDenormalized(OperationalAttributeService.java:441)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.operational.OperationalAttributeService.access$000(OperationalAttributeService.java:69)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.operational.OperationalAttributeService$1.accept(OperationalAttributeService.java:78)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.enumeration.SearchResultFilteringEnumeration.prefetch(SearchResultFilteringEnumeration.java:302)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.enumeration.SearchResultFilteringEnumeration.<init>(SearchResultFilteringEnumeration.java:109)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.operational.OperationalAttributeService.search(OperationalAttributeService.java:292)
at org.apache.directory.server.core.interceptor.InterceptorChain$Entry$1.search(InterceptorChain.java:1263)
... 36 more

You find the complete log attached to this issue.

Btw: (for those who ask why I submit such an obscure search op): I orginally faced this problem when using Softerra LDAP Administrator to browse the directory. It caused ugly errors in the UI.
Finally I was able to figure out what it is all about. The original query by the Softerra tool was:

$ ldapsearch -h localhost -p 10389 -D "uid=admin,ou=system" -w secret -b "ou=system" -s base "(ObjectClass=*)" createtimestamp + * modifiersname subschemasubentry modifytimestamp creatorsname hassubordinates
ldap_search: Unknown error
$