# River has returned no metrics but instead \[Poison\<\<esrally.driver.StartBenchmark

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/river-has-returned-no-metrics-but-instead-poison-esrally-driver-startbenchmark/60751>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** rally\
**Created:** [September 16, 2016, 8:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/river-has-returned-no-metrics-but-instead-poison-esrally-driver-startbenchmark/60751 "2016-09-16T20:10:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gregsterin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ed8c4c/32.png) [@gregsterin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gregsterin)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2016, 8:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/river-has-returned-no-metrics-but-instead-poison-esrally-driver-startbenchmark/60751/1 "2016-09-16T20:10:51Z")

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I'm trying to run my own track using 'esrally --pipeline=from-distribution --distribution-version=1.7.1 --track=merchants\_original --offline' but I'm getting the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):  
File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/esrally/racecontrol.py", line 364, in run  
pipeline()  
File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/esrally/racecontrol.py", line 60, in **call**  
step()  
File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/esrally/racecontrol.py", line 29, in **call**  
self.command(self.ctx)  
File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/esrally/racecontrol.py", line 145, in benchmark\_internal  
raise exceptions.RallyError("Driver has returned no metrics but instead [%s]. Terminating race without result." % str(completed))  
esrally.exceptions.RallyError: Driver has returned no metrics but instead [Poison\<\<esrally.driver.StartBenchmark object at 0x7fb9b5800978\>\>]. Terminating race without result.

What does this mean? How can I debug this futher?

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**Author:** ![danielmitterdorfer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/danielmitterdorfer/32/110510_2.png) [@danielmitterdorfer](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/danielmitterdorfer)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 7:54am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/river-has-returned-no-metrics-but-instead-poison-esrally-driver-startbenchmark/60751/2 "2016-09-19T07:54:24Z")

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Hi @gregsterin,

this is very likely a problem that happened while running the track. One problem _could_ be that your track has a syntax error. Does it work with the default tracks?

Can you please check / share the log files of this race? They are located in `/home/ubuntu/.rally/benchmarks/races/$TIMESTAMP/local/logs/`.

I've created [https://github.com/elastic/rally/issues/153](https://github.com/elastic/rally/issues/153) so Rally will provide a more helpful message in these cases.

Daniel

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**Author:** ![gregsterin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ed8c4c/32.png) [@gregsterin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gregsterin)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 5:12pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/river-has-returned-no-metrics-but-instead-poison-esrally-driver-startbenchmark/60751/3 "2016-09-19T17:12:20Z")

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@danielmitterdorfer - I was able to find the cause here. In my case it was that I needed to specify the --challenge= that I wanted to run, since the default challenge name was not in my track.

+1 on more helpful error messages here. In this case, if it told me "Did not find target challenge [CHALLENGE] in [TRACK]", I would have known what was wrong with less confusion.

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**Author:** ![danielmitterdorfer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/danielmitterdorfer/32/110510_2.png) [@danielmitterdorfer](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/danielmitterdorfer)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2016, 5:08am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/river-has-returned-no-metrics-but-instead-poison-esrally-driver-startbenchmark/60751/4 "2016-09-20T05:08:01Z")

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Hi @gregsterin,

great that you could identify the root cause. I try to get the improvement done in one of the releases of 0.4.x.

Daniel

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/river-has-returned-no-metrics-but-instead-poison-esrally-driver-startbenchmark/60751/5 "2017-07-05T22:18:57Z")

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