Job for elasticsearch.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration

[bayardk (Bayard Kohlhepp)]

Hi. I've just installed Elasticsearch 7.4 on three openSuSE LEAP 15.1 machines. Two are fine, one throws this systemd error:

$ sudo systemctl start elasticsearch
Job for elasticsearch.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration.
See "systemctl status elasticsearch.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

Systemctl status says:
● elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/elasticsearch.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: protocol) since Wed 2019-10-16 13:35:41 EDT; 27min ago
Docs: http://www.elastic.co
Process: 2303 ExecStart=/usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch -p ${PID_DIR}/elasticsearch.pid --quiet (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 2303 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Oct 16 13:35:12 dibri systemd[1]: Starting Elasticsearch...
Oct 16 13:35:13 dibri elasticsearch[2303]: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM warning: Option UseConcMarkSweepGC was deprecated in version 9.0 and will likely be removed in a future release.
Oct 16 13:35:41 dibri systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 16 13:35:41 dibri systemd[1]: Failed to start Elasticsearch.
Oct 16 13:35:41 dibri systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Unit entered failed state.
Oct 16 13:35:41 dibri systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Failed with result 'protocol'.

Any idea what the 'protocol' error is trying to say? This is a fresh install, no changes to default elastic files. Thanks.

[thurston (Josh Thurston)]

@bayardk
I had the same issue this morning with my 7.4 setup. I think i read through 20+ threads on various sites. I found a thread that led me to this link below and it solved my problem.

Quick overview of how my issue came about.

1. New ELK stack built yesterday
2. I ran into the issue after a restarting elasticsearch that was needed because I changed my network.host to 0.0.0.0 on elasticsearch.yml
3. Key was the bootstrap check failed because i didnt have the necessary cluster configuration with nodes, master, memory swap config, etc....
4. I made all the necessary changes, but discovered that my elasticsearch.service file was not updated properly. The systemd configuration piece at the bottom of this link was the true fix.

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/setting-system-settings.html#systemd

Hope this leads you to a quick fix.

[bayardk (Bayard Kohlhepp)]

Thanks! Unfortunately, I tried the page suggestions and still get the same error. Does anyone know how to troubleshoot the systemd error to find out what a 'protocol' error means?

[thurston (Josh Thurston)]

@ bayardk,

i played around some more and I solved my problem in a much more simple way.

in elasticsearch.yml

set your network.host to 0.0.0.0

Under Discovery add this with your own IP Address Info

discovery.seed_hosts:
   - 0.0.0.0:9300 #  This port is important.  Dont enter 9200 by mistake.
   - 192.168.1.50:9300 # Enter the actual IP of your elasticsearch server

Dont mess with any other junk that has been written in all the other posts. I didnt set node name, or cluster name etc. This may not be the preferred solution, but it works like a charm for me.