Kibana server is not ready yet

Meta Elastic Elastic Tips and Common Fixes
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If you run into this there are a few things you can do to try resolve the error.

Check Elasticsearch connectivity

From your Kibana host, run curl -XGET es-ip-or-hostname:9200/, you should see a response like;

{
  "name" : "randomname",
  "cluster_name" : "randomname",
  "cluster_uuid" : "randomuuid",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "7.8.0",
    "build_flavor" : "default",
    "build_type" : "docker",
    "build_hash" : "757314695644ea9a1dc2fecd26d1a43856725e65",
    "build_date" : "2020-06-14T19:35:50.234439Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "8.5.1",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "6.8.0",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "6.0.0-beta1"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

That means Elasticsearch is ready to be connected to!

If you don't see this that's potentially a clue that you can use; Did you get an authentication error, or no response at all? The follow up to that really depends on the response, which we won't get into here.

Check the Kibana logs

The location of this really depends on your operating system, but commonly it's;

  • Linux, DEB or RPM package - /var/log/kibana/kibana.log
  • Linux, tar.gz package - $KIBANA_HOME/log/kibana.log
  • WIndows - $KIBANA_HOME\log\kibana.log

There should be something showing what is happening during the startup process, it will include things like testing the connection to Elasticsearch, the license level, that the .kibana and other related indices are ready to be read and written to.

NOTE if you use systemctl status, or journalctl or similar, to check the logs, it may miss some important info, as this command only shows the latest entries. You may need to pass in arguments to show more of the log, or you can use less or more directly on the file.

The .kibana index is red

You will need to dig into this one to identify which is your master node, and then check the logs on it to see what is happening. Alternatively you can use the _cluster/allocation/explain API to show further information.

Still need help?

Head on over to the Kibana category and put as much info in there as you can. Including;

  • Version of Kibana, Elasticsearch
  • Your OS and how you installed Kibana (Deb/RPM or other)
  • Your Kibana log. You may need to put it on gist/pastebin/etc and link to it
  • Anything you tried from the above set of steps to diagnose the issue.
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