Snapshot 'repository_missing_exception'

[frasdav (Fraser Davidson)]

We've got two Elasticsearch 2.4 clusters configured identically. Both have a snapshot repository called 'backups' defined. If I do:

curl -XGET https://$(hostname --fqdn):9200/_snapshot?pretty

..on any node in either cluster, I get:

{
  "backups" : {
    "type" : "fs",
    "settings" : {
      "compress" : "true",
      "location" : "backups"
    }
  }
}

On cluster two, I can successfully list the snapshots in the 'backups' repository with:

curl -XGET https://$(hostname --fqdn):9200/_snapshot/backups/_all?pretty

..but in cluster one, I get the following error message:

{
  "error" : {
    "root_cause" : [ {
      "type" : "repository_missing_exception",
      "reason" : "[backups] missing"
    } ],
    "type" : "repository_missing_exception",
    "reason" : "[backups] missing"
  },
  "status" : 404
}

So in cluster one I can see the repository with the first command, but when I try to call anything on that repository (including creating and restoring snapshots), I get the error.

There's nothing in the logs, so I'm posting to see if anyone has seen this elsewhere first, before I start to look at deleting and recreating the repository (which I assume will trash the snapshots, hence not something I'd rather avoid if possible).