opened 09:15PM - 01 Nov 16 UTC
closed 01:38AM - 02 Nov 16 UTC
bug
v5.0.0
Logstash installed via rpm and apt packages cannot be manually started with `-e`… flag. `-e` flag's behavior is to merge config string supplied via command line to config file supplied via `-f`. Now, in packages, `logstash.yml` is implicitly setting `path.config` to `/etc/logstash/conf.d/*`. This means whenever a user does
```
bin/logstash -e 'foo'
```
it is actually merging contents of directory `/etc/logstash.conf.d`
For a fresh installation, no config files are found and LS bails with an error.
A combination of all these issues causes a lot of confusion for first users and users experienced with pre-5.0 behavior where there was no `logstash.yml`
Related: https://github.com/elastic/logstash/issues/6062
https://discuss.elastic.co/t/logstash-5-not-running/64449
Also, our documentation for getting started instructs to use `e`, so this is needs to be fixed.