Visualizations size change in dashboard after import from Kibana 6.4.0 to Kibana 6.2.4

[barcomasile (Marco Basile)]

I exported every saved object (indices, searches, visualizations and dashboards) from an instance of Kibana 6.4.0 to another instance of Kibana 6.2.4 .
The problem I encounter is after the import, the size of the panels in every dashboard is different on Kibana 6.2.4 then Kibana 6.4.0, specifically it is bigger. Every panel in the dashboards is bigger, apparently by the same factor. Doing the opposite (exporting the saved objects from kibana 6.2.4 to kibana 6.4.0) results in the panels appearing smaller.

To do the import I use a ruby script I wrote taking advantage of the kibana APIs, and I take care of the differences in the API since the API of Kibana 6.3 made a few important changes.
Did anybody else have got the same problem?

For reference, the ruby script is here https://github.com/BarcoMasile/kibana-import-export

Thanks

[Larry_Gregory]

Hi @barcomasile,

Can you post a couple of screenshots illustrating the size difference you are seeing? We did add Dashboard Actions recently, which do take up some additional space on screen:

[barcomasile (Marco Basile)]

@Larry_Gregory, thank you for replying. Unfortunately I'm not at work right now and I am not able to replicate the situation here from home, so on Monday I'll be able to post screenshots. Right now I can tell you that the size difference is very big, meaning that in the case of "shrinkage" (so from Kibana 6.2.4 to Kibana 6.4.0) the whole dashboard goes from being 2 screen sizes in vertical, from being stuck in 1/5 of one screen size, making it impossible to view anything in the panels, which appear like little white almost empty tiles.
In the case of the "enlargement" (so from Kibana 6.4.0 to Kibana 6.2.4), the same dashboard goes from 2 screen sizes to about 6 - 7 screens in vertical.

[barcomasile (Marco Basile)]

Here I am, good morning. I'm posting two pictures. Please don't mind the error message (it's because the visualization doesn't find the right index pattern, but I made it so just to recreate the "size-changing" situation).
This is the dashboard with 3 visualization, how it looks regularly on a Kibana 6.2.4

This is the same dashboard exported from that Kibana and imported in a Kibana 6.4.0 (again, please ignore the error message, it is left like that on purpose just for demo reason).

[barcomasile (Marco Basile)]

The strange thing is that, if I check the values in the json that describes the size and coordinates of the panels, they match from one kibana to the other. So either kibana doesn't interpret them the right way (because of the different version) or there's something happening under the hood that I don't have control over.

[Larry_Gregory]

Thanks for providing screenshots. Version 6.3 did change the way dashboard panels are scaled, but my understanding based on the pull request (https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/16763) is that your panels should be scaling automatically. If your visualizations don't contain sensitive data, would you be able to share them so that I can try to reproduce this?

[barcomasile (Marco Basile)]

Unfortunately I can't share the dashboards, but what I can do is point you to the ruby script I wrote to do the importing and exporting of all the saved objects, so you can recreate the issue exporting everything from a Kibana 6.2.4 and importing everything to a Kibana 6.4.0. If it's ok for you.

git clone https://github.com/BarcoMasile/kibana-import-export

cd kibana-import-export
ruby import-export.rb export ${Kibana_6_2_4_host} ${Kibana_6_2_4_port}

This will create 4 folders (all capital letters) with the export. Then you can do

ruby import-export.rb import ${Kibana_6_4_host} ${Kibana_6_4_port} --dry-run
to check what would be imported, and then without the "--dry-run" so you can do the import properly.
Just make sure the Kibana 6.4 is empty before importing or at least doesn't have the same saved_objects with the same ids.
The script uses the rest apis.