After upgrading from 7.x to 8.x, Elasticsearch cannot start

These are the errors in the logs:

Aug 29 13:45:34 ELK-Stack.uhtasi.local systemd-entrypoint[13266]: Error occurred during initialization of boot layer

Aug 29 13:45:34 ELK-Stack.uhtasi.local systemd-entrypoint[13266]: java.lang.module.ResolutionException: Modules tools and jdk.jdi export package com.sun.jdi to module HdrHistogram

Aug 29 13:45:35 ELK-Stack.uhtasi.local systemd-entrypoint[13266]: ERROR: Elasticsearch died while starting up, with exit code 1

Help is appreciated!

You have not provided a lot of information, so there is not a lot to go on.

Did you follow the official upgrade guide available in the documentation?

Also please share any errors and context around these from the Elasticsearch logs.

I just reverted back to pre-upgrade.

This is my current Upgrade Assistant:


I am bypassing the "Back up your data" since I am snapshotting the virtual machine on the VMware side anyway, if that's fine.

My question: Is the rolling upgrade required? Or can I just do the RPM method without doing the rolling upgrade?

That is not a supported backup method, so there is no guarantee that will work. Please see the official documentation for further details.

How many nodes do you have in the cluster?

How many nodes do you have in the cluster?

"number_of_nodes" : 1

What are the next steps?

If you only have one node you can ignore the instructions around rolling upgrade. You will need to upgrade in place with downtime.