# Curator: Too many Forcemerge Tasks

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [June 11, 2018, 9:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328 "2018-06-11T09:55:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dawiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71e660/32.png) [@dawiro](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dawiro)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2018, 9:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328/1 "2018-06-11T09:55:13Z")

</div>

Hi,  
I have enabled forcemerge management via curator and it is causing us an issue. That is, after enabling it late on Thursday we now have 1400+ running tasks. This is not a large cluster and so is causing widespread issues.  
Config file looks like this:

```
  action_forcemerge.yml: |-
    ---
    actions:
      1:
        action: forcemerge
        description: "Perform forcemerge operation on rolled indices"
        options:
          max_num_segments: 1
          timeout_override: 21600
          ignore_empty_list: true
          delay: 300
          disable_action: true
        filters:
        - filtertype: age
          source: creation_date
          direction: older
          unit: days
          unit_count: 1
        - filtertype: forcemerged
          max_num_segments: 1
          exclude: true

```

It's triggered from a cronjob which runs once per day...

However, the tasks that are running are not cancellable. So, how can I clear them down? They don't seem to be active in that segment counts have not fallen to 1 per shard with 4 merges currently running against today's index (1 per shard).

Regards,  
D

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![theuntergeek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/theuntergeek/32/44961_2.png) [@theuntergeek](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/theuntergeek)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2018, 10:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328/2 "2018-06-11T10:39:57Z")

</div>

> [@dawiro](#):
>
> disable\_action: true

Action `1` will not run with this set. I don't think your forcemerges are even happening.

Also, if your Curator filters select 10 indices, Curator will only request one forcemerge at a time, as sending those concurrently would be too much I/O for Elasticsearch to try to manage at once. I repeat, Curator only permits a single forcemerge to run at a time. Additionally, once a single forcemerge request has been made to Elasticsearch, others will be blocked until the first one is finished. Elasticsearch will only handle 1 forcemerge request at a time.

I'm not sure where you got the 1400 number, but forcemerges do not show up in the \_tasks API that I have ever seen. I looked to see if I could detect them that way, and found that I could not.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dawiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71e660/32.png) [@dawiro](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dawiro)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2018, 10:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328/3 "2018-06-11T10:41:02Z")

</div>

Ah sorry, this is an updated version of the action that is now disabled. It was active until this morning. Sorry for that 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dawiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71e660/32.png) [@dawiro](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dawiro)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2018, 11:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328/4 "2018-06-11T11:07:22Z")

</div>

@theuntergeek So, treat that config as if it is active...

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![theuntergeek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/theuntergeek/32/44961_2.png) [@theuntergeek](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/theuntergeek)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2018, 11:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328/5 "2018-06-11T11:18:03Z")

</div>

The rest of my initial answer does treat it as if it is active. My answer is still applicable.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dawiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71e660/32.png) [@dawiro](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dawiro)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2018, 1:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328/6 "2018-06-11T13:42:05Z")

</div>

Perhaps there's something happening with the container running the job. I'll focus on that for now. Thank you...

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2018, 1:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/curator-too-many-forcemerge-tasks/135328/7 "2018-07-09T13:42:07Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.