I'm running Paraview 4.2 on Linux. Here's what's happening:

I load my XDMF/hdf5 data into PV, which contains vector data.
I apply a glyph filter to the loaded data, and hit apply (thereby using the default mode of Uniform Spatial Distribution).
No glyphs appear on screen, and the information tab shows that the filter has no data (0 points, etc.).
If I switch to All Points, or Every Nth Point, it works fine and displays the glyphs oriented correctly.

Annoyingly, if I then make a cone source, and change the input of the glyph to the cone, Uniform Spatial Distribution works fine for the cone.
No errors come up anywhere when I do this, whether in the PV gui or through pvpython.
Any ideas?
Uniform distribution works by picking a set of random locations in space and finding data points closet to those locations to glyph. Try playing with the Seed to see if that helps pick different random locations that yield better results.
If you could share the data, that'd make it easier to figure out what could be going on here, as well.
Paraview glyph uniform distribution does not work on my dataset