# ELasticseacrh Cluster won't form bc of no username/pass but setting up user/pass needs a healthy cluster **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Tags:** elastic-stack-security\ **Created:** [November 18, 2021, 1:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticseacrh-cluster-wont-form-bc-of-no-username-pass-but-setting-up-user-pass-needs-a-healthy-cluster/289601 "2021-11-18T13:53:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Maryam2021](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d07c76/32.png) [@Maryam2021](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Maryam2021)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2021, 1:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticseacrh-cluster-wont-form-bc-of-no-username-pass-but-setting-up-user-pass-needs-a-healthy-cluster/289601/1 "2021-11-18T13:53:17Z")
Hi All, I am new and probably missing something, stuck in an infinite loop! I am trying to build an ES cluster of 3 nodes. without any xpack it works fine and comes up. now I need to enable the security (btw I am on basic license) so if I try to set "./bin/Elasticsearch-setup-passwords interactive" it says hey u have to enable xpack.security, I go back set that to true (it also asks me to set the transport to true as well which I did) and restarted the Elasticsearch but now the cluster is turning red bc it needs to authenticate! so username/pass needs the cluster to be healthy and healthy cluster needs user/pass to be set ! this is a broken loop! Am I missing soemthing? please help. ---
**Author:** ![Yang\_Wang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/yang_wang/32/48857_2.png) [@Yang\_Wang](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Yang_Wang)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2021, 11:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticseacrh-cluster-wont-form-bc-of-no-username-pass-but-setting-up-user-pass-needs-a-healthy-cluster/289601/2 "2021-11-18T23:17:49Z")
Cluster forming does _not_ require username/password setup. I suspect the issue you are having is with TLS setup. I suggest you follow the instruction of [setup basic security](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/security-basic-setup.html). It would also be helpful if you could share the complete error mesesages from the server log files. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2021, 11:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticseacrh-cluster-wont-form-bc-of-no-username-pass-but-setting-up-user-pass-needs-a-healthy-cluster/289601/3 "2021-12-16T23:18:02Z")
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