Schedule dashboard PDF delivery fails, it sends an email with PDF error message.

Applicability

Splunk Enterprise Splunk Cloud

Description

This is the error seen:
 

An error occurred while generating the PDF. Please see python.log for details

Investigation

There are two files that save the logs related to PDF generation: python.log and pdfgen.log, located on the search head in which the PDF delivery was created.

The logs will indicate what happened during the scheduled delivery, the best way to identify the issue would be to look for the logs that match the time when the email was sent. 

For example, the message arrived to the email destination at 08:00 a.m: (the logs below are from pdfgen.log):

2019-11-15 08:00:02,780 -0500 ERROR sendemail:1150 - An error occurred while generating a PDF:
Failed to fetch PDF (status = 400): Unable to render PDF. Bailing out of Integrated PDF 
Generation. Exception raised while preparing to render "Untitled" to PDF. [HTTP 404] 
https://127.0.0.1:8089/servicesNS/user_name%40customer.com/search/saved/searches/
nameofthesavedsearch; [{'code': None, 'text': 'Could not find object id=nameofthesavedsearch',
'type': 'ERROR'}]

 

2019-11-15 08:00:02,819 -0500 INFO sendemail:134 - Sending email. subject="Subject_of_email'",
results_link="https://customer.splunkcloud.com:443/app/search/@go?sid=", recipients="
[u'customer@customer.com']", server="localhost"

  

2019-11-15 08:00:03,304 -0500 INFO sendemail:134 - Sending email. subject="Splunk Dashboard: 
'Active Monitoring'", results_link="https://customer.splunkcloud.com:443/app/search/@go?sid=",
recipients="[u'customer@customer.com']", server="localhost"

You can use the information on the logs above to isolate the issue using the fields on the last log, as it contains the subject and the destination email. 

Sending email. subject="Splunk Dashboard: 'Active Monitoring'", 
results_link="https://customer.splunkcloud.com:443/app/search/@go?sid=", recipients=
"[u'customer@customer.com']", server="localhost"

The logs above indicate that the PDF was not generated due to the following error: 

[{'code': None, 'text': 'Could not find object id=nameofthesavedsearch', 'type': 'ERROR'}]

The error above shows the name of the saved search. 

The case above was specifically for a dashboard,  a PDF Delivery was created to send a PDF at 08:00 a.m., and it suddenly stopped working. 

After checking the dashboard, we found that the Could not find object id=nameofthesavedsearch, was also on the dashboard. 


 

Resolution

To resolve this issue, we need to fix/remove the part of the dashboard showing the error.

After removing/fixing this part of the dashboard, the PDF should be generated correctly. 

The case above was fixed when the saved search used to populate the dashboard was set to work on the app context. 
 

Related Links

Splunk Answers
Where should I check for python.log error messages about generating pdf of scheduled reports?
https://answers.splunk.com/answers/339920/where-should-i-check-for-pythonlog-error-messages.html
 

Which configuration path/file is used when I schedule one of my dashboards for PDF delivery?
https://answers.splunk.com/answers/339017/which-configuration-pathfile-is-used-when-i-schedu.html

Revision History

Revision	Publish Date	Comments
1.0	28-Sep-2026	Initial Release