Elasticsearch put all indices to read-only mode before upgrade

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hello,

Is is possible to put all indexes including all system to read-only mode ?
I was looking about that but could find only read-only mode to dedicated one index.

I'm doing test upgrade and everytime when I try to set indexes to read-only mode I have many hidden,
for example .task (probably from kibana) .ds

I need to put a setting in elasticsearch without anything else to put all indexes including .* to read-only mode to perform migration

2

I don't think this is possible, those system indices needs to be writable for them to be upgradable.

Why you want to mark them as read-only? There is no need to mark any index as read-only during upgrades.

3

During upgrade I received below errors like:
`

{"@timestamp":"2025-05-27T16:53:49.722Z", "log.level":"ERROR", "message":"fatal exception while booting Elasticsearch", "ecs.version": "1.2.0","service.name":"ES_ECS","event.dataset":"elasticsearch.server","process.thread.name":"main","log.logger":"org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch","elasticsearch.node.name":"elastic-tst-0","elasticsearch.cluster.name":"tst-cluster","error.type":"java.lang.IllegalStateException","error.message":"The index [.reporting-2021.10.03/7qFTO5dhTDm4fdsinJ1kQw] created in version [7.8.0] with current compatibility version [7.8.0] must be marked as read-only using the setting [index.blocks.write] set to [true] before upgrading to 9.0.1.","error.stack_trace":"java.lang.IllegalStateException: The index [.reporting-2021.10.03/7qFTO5dhTDm4fdsinJ1kQw] created in version [7.8.0] with current compatibility version [7.8.0] must be marked as read-only using the setting [index.blocks.write] set to [true] before upgrading to 9.0.1.\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.cluster.metadata.IndexMetadataVerifier.isReadOnlySupportedVersion(IndexMetadataVerifier.java:180)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.cluster.metadata.IndexMetadataVerifier.checkSupportedVersion(IndexMetadataVerifier.java:126)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.cluster.metadata.IndexMetadataVerifier.verifyIndexMetadata(IndexMetadataVerifier.java:98)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.gateway.GatewayMetaState.upgradeMetadata(GatewayMetaState.java:298)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.gateway.GatewayMetaState.upgradeMetadataForNode(GatewayMetaState.java:285)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.gateway.GatewayMetaState.createOnDiskPersistedState(GatewayMetaState.java:193)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.gateway.GatewayMetaState.createPersistedState(GatewayMetaState.java:147)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.gateway.GatewayMetaState.start(GatewayMetaState.java:105)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.node.Node.start(Node.java:315)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.start(Elasticsearch.java:648)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.initPhase3(Elasticsearch.java:445)\n\tat org.elasticsearch.server@9.0.1/org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:102)\n"}

`
which means that index has compatibility issues,
I have many of them, can be deleted so I thought that I can use some setting in elasticsearch to mark all as read-only

I learned from elasticsearch documentation that in kibana there is upgrade assistant which will show me about indexes with compatibility issues.

I have a question by the way if I will mark as read-only - can I after upgrade mark those indexes mark back as write ? Or should I reindex those indexes ?