I managed to replicate this crash. I'm not sure what happens, but the crash happens with an input configuration that is not JSON.
- type: log
enabled: true
paths:
- /fake
The full debug output from filebeats is here: https://gist.github.com/alexjurkiewicz/da219f1bb1d191db455e983d3a7a961a
I tried twice, and had the same issues both times.
I added a single line to this file with echo hi >>/fake and then started Filebeat, when it immediately failed with this error.
I am really confused now 