Logstash within docker container trying to connect to elasticsearch

[holt]

There was a similar post on this, but the replies have been deleted:

When I run a elasticsearch 5.3.1 from a docker container it tries to connect to elasticsearch even though my pipeline only has a udp port as the output. My Dockerfile has:

RUN rm -f /usr/share/logstash/pipeline/*

as the command right after FROM (specifying 5.3.1)

I think that would get rid of all pipeline config files.

I then

ADD my_pipeline/ /usr/share/logstash/pipeline/

I can see my pipeline being executed correctly, but logstash is also stuck trying to connect to elasticsearch, which I don't need. How can this behavior be changed?
Thank you.

[magnusbaeck (Magnus Bäck)]

If you increase Logstash's log level it should give you more clues about what configuration it loads and where that configuration comes from.

[holt]

So the theory is that xpack is somehow bundled with the docker logstash image. I don't know much about xpack, but 1: is that true?
2: why would that not be documented?
3: how does bundling xpack cause an assumption that logstash should be connecting to an elasticsearch service?

Thank you.

[magnusbaeck (Magnus Bäck)]

Poking around in https://github.com/elastic/logstash-docker it looks like it by default configures X-Pack monitoring to Elasticsearch (via logstash.yml) but the pipeline only contains a stdout output.