# Dangling index info messages in logs

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dangling-index-info-messages-in-logs/16088
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [March 2, 2014, 5:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dangling-index-info-messages-in-logs/16088 "2014-03-02T05:42:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![hrishikesh\_prabhune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@hrishikesh\_prabhune](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hrishikesh_prabhune)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2014, 5:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dangling-index-info-messages-in-logs/16088/1 "2014-03-02T05:42:04Z")

</div>

Hello all,

I have an elasticsearch cluster of 16 nodes , all of which are eligible  
master and data nodes. I had to add some load balancing nodes to the  
cluster so i added 6 extra nodes to the cluster . These newly added nodes  
are all eligible master nodes only(not eligible data nodes). I restarted  
the whole cluster by making the original 16 nodes to be eligible data nodes  
only and the newly added 6 nodes were kept as eligible master nodes only.  
During the first restart after changing the whole configuration of cluster  
I started getting these INFO messages in the logs :  
[2014-03-02 04:33:57,857][INFO][gateway.local.state.meta] [node1] [%user%  
index] dangling index, exists on local file system, but not in cluster  
metadata, scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]

I thought the indices were about to be deleted so I immediately shutdown  
the cluster and reverted back to the original configuration.  
Can anyone shed a light on these info messages? According to my  
understanding, only the cluster meta data of theses indices were about to  
changed or deleted but not the data in the index. It would be great if  
anyone could give a quick explanation about why I am getting these messages.  
Thanks in advance!!

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![hrishikesh\_prabhune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@hrishikesh\_prabhune](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hrishikesh_prabhune)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2014, 5:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dangling-index-info-messages-in-logs/16088/2 "2014-03-02T05:43:16Z")

</div>

Oh I forgot to mention... I am using Elasticsearch version 1.0.1  
Thanks!

On Saturday, March 1, 2014 9:42:04 PM UTC-8, hrishikesh prabhune wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I have an elasticsearch cluster of 16 nodes , all of which are eligible  
> master and data nodes. I had to add some load balancing nodes to the  
> cluster so i added 6 extra nodes to the cluster . These newly added nodes  
> are all eligible master nodes only(not eligible data nodes). I restarted  
> the whole cluster by making the original 16 nodes to be eligible data nodes  
> only and the newly added 6 nodes were kept as eligible master nodes only.  
> During the first restart after changing the whole configuration of cluster  
> I started getting these INFO messages in the logs :  
> [2014-03-02 04:33:57,857][INFO][gateway.local.state.meta] [node1] [%user  
> %index] dangling index, exists on local file system, but not in cluster  
> metadata, scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]
> 
> I thought the indices were about to be deleted so I immediately shutdown  
> the cluster and reverted back to the original configuration.  
> Can anyone shed a light on these info messages? According to my  
> understanding, only the cluster meta data of theses indices were about to  
> changed or deleted but not the data in the index. It would be great if  
> anyone could give a quick explanation about why I am getting these messages.  
> Thanks in advance!!

On Saturday, March 1, 2014 9:42:04 PM UTC-8, hrishikesh prabhune wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I have an elasticsearch cluster of 16 nodes , all of which are eligible  
> master and data nodes. I had to add some load balancing nodes to the  
> cluster so i added 6 extra nodes to the cluster . These newly added nodes  
> are all eligible master nodes only(not eligible data nodes). I restarted  
> the whole cluster by making the original 16 nodes to be eligible data nodes  
> only and the newly added 6 nodes were kept as eligible master nodes only.  
> During the first restart after changing the whole configuration of cluster  
> I started getting these INFO messages in the logs :  
> [2014-03-02 04:33:57,857][INFO][gateway.local.state.meta] [node1] [%user  
> %index] dangling index, exists on local file system, but not in cluster  
> metadata, scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]
> 
> I thought the indices were about to be deleted so I immediately shutdown  
> the cluster and reverted back to the original configuration.  
> Can anyone shed a light on these info messages? According to my  
> understanding, only the cluster meta data of theses indices were about to  
> changed or deleted but not the data in the index. It would be great if  
> anyone could give a quick explanation about why I am getting these messages.  
> Thanks in advance!!

On Saturday, March 1, 2014 9:42:04 PM UTC-8, hrishikesh prabhune wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I have an elasticsearch cluster of 16 nodes , all of which are eligible  
> master and data nodes. I had to add some load balancing nodes to the  
> cluster so i added 6 extra nodes to the cluster . These newly added nodes  
> are all eligible master nodes only(not eligible data nodes). I restarted  
> the whole cluster by making the original 16 nodes to be eligible data nodes  
> only and the newly added 6 nodes were kept as eligible master nodes only.  
> During the first restart after changing the whole configuration of cluster  
> I started getting these INFO messages in the logs :  
> [2014-03-02 04:33:57,857][INFO][gateway.local.state.meta] [node1] [%user  
> %index] dangling index, exists on local file system, but not in cluster  
> metadata, scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]
> 
> I thought the indices were about to be deleted so I immediately shutdown  
> the cluster and reverted back to the original configuration.  
> Can anyone shed a light on these info messages? According to my  
> understanding, only the cluster meta data of theses indices were about to  
> changed or deleted but not the data in the index. It would be great if  
> anyone could give a quick explanation about why I am getting these messages.  
> Thanks in advance!!

On Saturday, March 1, 2014 9:42:04 PM UTC-8, hrishikesh prabhune wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I have an elasticsearch cluster of 16 nodes , all of which are eligible  
> master and data nodes. I had to add some load balancing nodes to the  
> cluster so i added 6 extra nodes to the cluster . These newly added nodes  
> are all eligible master nodes only(not eligible data nodes). I restarted  
> the whole cluster by making the original 16 nodes to be eligible data nodes  
> only and the newly added 6 nodes were kept as eligible master nodes only.  
> During the first restart after changing the whole configuration of cluster  
> I started getting these INFO messages in the logs :  
> [2014-03-02 04:33:57,857][INFO][gateway.local.state.meta] [node1] [%user  
> %index] dangling index, exists on local file system, but not in cluster  
> metadata, scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]
> 
> I thought the indices were about to be deleted so I immediately shutdown  
> the cluster and reverted back to the original configuration.  
> Can anyone shed a light on these info messages? According to my  
> understanding, only the cluster meta data of theses indices were about to  
> changed or deleted but not the data in the index. It would be great if  
> anyone could give a quick explanation about why I am getting these messages.  
> Thanks in advance!!

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### Author: ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2014, 7:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dangling-index-info-messages-in-logs/16088/3 "2014-03-02T07:57:32Z")

</div>

The problem here is that the new master was not synchronized with an old master.  
So he started with an empty cluster state.

To do that kind of operation, you have to bring your new master nodes up in a running cluster so they will be synchronized, then stop the cluster, change data nodes settings and restart.

You should test on a dev machine what would happen if you set again old node to be master again. I think it won't work and will still try to remove your old data.  
If you have a backup somewhere of your cluster state, that would probably be useful.

My 2 cents.

--  
David 😉  
Twitter : @dadoonet / @elasticsearchfr / @scrutmydocs

Le 2 mars 2014 à 06:42, hrishikesh prabhune [hruship@gmail.com](mailto:hruship@gmail.com) a écrit :

> Hello all,
> 
> I have an elasticsearch cluster of 16 nodes , all of which are eligible master and data nodes. I had to add some load balancing nodes to the cluster so i added 6 extra nodes to the cluster . These newly added nodes are all eligible master nodes only(not eligible data nodes). I restarted the whole cluster by making the original 16 nodes to be eligible data nodes only and the newly added 6 nodes were kept as eligible master nodes only.  
> During the first restart after changing the whole configuration of cluster I started getting these INFO messages in the logs :  
> [2014-03-02 04:33:57,857][INFO][gateway.local.state.meta] [node1] [%user%index] dangling index, exists on local file system, but not in cluster metadata, scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]
> 
> ## I thought the indices were about to be deleted so I immediately shutdown the cluster and reverted back to the original configuration. Can anyone shed a light on these info messages? According to my understanding, only the cluster meta data of theses indices were about to changed or deleted but not the data in the index. It would be great if anyone could give a quick explanation about why I am getting these messages. Thanks in advance!!
> 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.  
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> For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out).

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### Author: ![hrishikesh\_prabhune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@hrishikesh\_prabhune](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hrishikesh_prabhune)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2014, 5:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dangling-index-info-messages-in-logs/16088/4 "2014-03-03T05:15:09Z")

</div>

Thanks for a quick reply!  
Thankfully I didn't see any data loss. I think its because when I saw the  
dangling index error I shutdown the whole cluster immediately before the  
cluster would start recovering the indices. And then I reverted back to the  
original configuration of the cluster. After that everything recovered  
smoothly.  
Also the INFO message stated that the delete was scheduled in 2 hours. But  
no such delete happened when I reverted back to the old cluster  
configuration. Does that mean that the old cluster meta information did not  
get overwritten? I am still kind of confused why didn't the auto import to  
cluster state didnt erase the old cluster state. Can you please elaborate a  
little bit more on the this particular line in the INFO message

scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 11:57 PM, David Pilato [david@pilato.fr](mailto:david@pilato.fr) wrote:

> The problem here is that the new master was not synchronized with an old  
> master.  
> So he started with an empty cluster state.
> 
> To do that kind of operation, you have to bring your new master nodes up  
> in a running cluster so they will be synchronized, then stop the cluster,  
> change data nodes settings and restart.
> 
> You should test on a dev machine what would happen if you set again old  
> node to be master again. I think it won't work and will still try to remove  
> your old data.  
> If you have a backup somewhere of your cluster state, that would probably  
> be useful.
> 
> My 2 cents.
> 
> --  
> David 😉  
> Twitter : @dadoonet / @elasticsearchfr / @scrutmydocs
> 
> Le 2 mars 2014 à 06:42, hrishikesh prabhune [hruship@gmail.com](mailto:hruship@gmail.com) a écrit :
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I have an elasticsearch cluster of 16 nodes , all of which are eligible  
> master and data nodes. I had to add some load balancing nodes to the  
> cluster so i added 6 extra nodes to the cluster . These newly added nodes  
> are all eligible master nodes only(not eligible data nodes). I restarted  
> the whole cluster by making the original 16 nodes to be eligible data nodes  
> only and the newly added 6 nodes were kept as eligible master nodes only.  
> During the first restart after changing the whole configuration of cluster  
> I started getting these INFO messages in the logs :  
> [2014-03-02 04:33:57,857][INFO][gateway.local.state.meta] [node1] [%user  
> %index] dangling index, exists on local file system, but not in cluster  
> metadata, scheduling to delete in [2h], auto import to cluster state [YES]
> 
> I thought the indices were about to be deleted so I immediately shutdown  
> the cluster and reverted back to the original configuration.  
> Can anyone shed a light on these info messages? According to my  
> understanding, only the cluster meta data of theses indices were about to  
> changed or deleted but not the data in the index. It would be great if  
> anyone could give a quick explanation about why I am getting these messages.  
> Thanks in advance!!
> 
> --  
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups  
> "elasticsearch" group.  
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an  
> email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
> 
> To view this discussion on the web visit  
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> .  
> For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out).
> 
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> .
> 
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### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/dangling-index-info-messages-in-logs/16088/5 "2017-07-06T01:46:17Z")

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