# \[SOLVED\] Mail server configuration issues

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting\
**Created:** [September 9, 2015, 1:45pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933 "2015-09-09T13:45:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tom\_jonge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ba0ec/32.png) [@tom\_jonge](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tom_jonge)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2015, 1:45pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/1 "2015-09-09T13:45:10Z")

</div>

Greetings,

I followed the guides to install the ELK stack and everything went according to expectations. I currently have 2 kibana4 nodes with elasticsearch 1.7.1 query nodes, 2 elasticsearch 1.7.1 data nodes and 2 logstash 1.5.4 nodes. Everything is working brilliantly. Cluster health shows all green.

**Next step is installing and configuring watcher.** I installed the latest license and latest watcher.  
Curl output to show watcher functioning:

```
> curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_watcher/stats?pretty=true'
> {
> "watcher_state" : "started",
> "watch_count" : 1,
> "execution_thread_pool" : {
> "queue_size" : 0,
> "max_size" : 10
> }
> }

```

The watch that was curled in:

```
> curl -XPUT 'http://localhost:9200/_watcher/watch/cluster_health_watch' -d '{
> "trigger" : {
> "schedule" : { "interval" : "10s" }
> },
> "input" : {
> "http" : {
> "request" : {
> "host" : "localhost",
> "port" : 9200,
> "path" : "/_cluster/health"
> }
> }
> },
> "condition" : {
> "compare" : {
> "ctx.payload.status" : { "eq" : "red" }
> }
> },
> "actions" : {
> "send_email" : {
> "email" : {
> "to" : "<receivingaddress>@gmail.com",
> "subject" : "Cluster Status Warning",
> "body" : "Cluster status is RED"
> }
> }
> }
> }'

```

So far so good! However when adding below mailserver configuration to the elasticsearch.yml of every node, **elasticsearch refuses to start and no log messages are added to elasticsearch's logfles**.

```
> watcher.actions.email.service.account:
> gmail_account:
> profile: gmail
> smtp:
> auth: true
> starttls.enable: true
> host: smtp.gmail.com
> port: 587
> user: <username@gmail.com>
> password: <password>

```

Gmail's allow less secure apps is turned on.  
Taking out the above mailserver config from elasticsearch.yml lets Elasticsearch start normally.

Can anyone more knowledgable point me to what I'm doing wrong?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2015, 7:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/2 "2015-09-10T07:27:21Z")

</div>

How are you starting ES?

Actually I think the issue is the white spacing of the user and password fields, they need to be aligned with port.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tom\_jonge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ba0ec/32.png) [@tom\_jonge](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tom_jonge)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2015, 12:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/3 "2015-09-10T12:11:11Z")

</div>

Service elasticsearch start or /etc/init.d/elasticsearch start. Both return a status of not running after executing.  
It is my understanding that starting ES with bin/elasticsearch start, is ill advised and throws me log4j errors(and nothing mentioning anything else) when I try.

I tried your suggestion of aligning the user and password fields with port (which was excellent btw and I'm hitting myself for overlooking that) as below:

```
> watcher.actions.email.service.account:
> gmail_account:
> profile: gmail
> smtp:
> auth: true
> starttls.enable: true
> host: smtp.gmail.com
> port: 587
> user: <sendingaddress>@gmail.com	 
> password: <password>

```

But alas the issue persists.  
I'm starting to think I'm operating on the wrong assumption that I can just add the mail configuration at the bottom of the elasticsearch.yml.

As an append. Elasticsearch stops normally before making changes as shown in log below:

```
> [2015-09-10 13:55:33,413][INFO][node] [esclient-2] stopping ...
> [2015-09-10 13:55:33,483][INFO][node] [esclient-2] stopped
> [2015-09-10 13:55:33,484][INFO][node] [esclient-2] closing ...
> [2015-09-10 13:55:33,492][INFO][node] [esclient-2] closed

```

No logs were added when trying to start ES after adding the mail config at 2015-09-10 14:10:00.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2015, 10:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/4 "2015-09-10T22:24:35Z")

</div>

When I have run into these I try to run the ES command directly myself, it sometimes spits out a little more.

eg something like this, but not this as it's running on my laptop 😉  
`/usr/bin/java -Xms256m -Xmx1g -Djava.awt.headless=true -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=75 -XX:+UseCMSInitiatingOccupancyOnly -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Delasticsearch -Des.foreground=yes -Des.path.home=/Users/markw/Workspace/elastic/elasticsearch-1.7.1 -cp :/Users/markw/Workspace/elastic/elasticsearch-1.7.1/lib/elasticsearch-1.7.1.jar:/Users/markw/Workspace/elastic/elasticsearch-1.7.1/lib/*:/Users/markw/Workspace/elastic/elasticsearch-1.7.1/lib/sigar/* -Des.config=Confs/ES/elasticsearch.yml -Xmx2g -Xms2g org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch`

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tom\_jonge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ba0ec/32.png) [@tom\_jonge](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tom_jonge)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2015, 7:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/5 "2015-09-11T07:30:32Z")

</div>

As suggested, started ES directly.

```
> sudo bin/elasticsearch start
> Failed to configure logging...
> org.elasticsearch.ElasticsearchException: Failed to load logging configuration
> at org.elasticsearch.common.logging.log4j.LogConfigurator.resolveConfig(LogConfigurator.java:142)
> at org.elasticsearch.common.logging.log4j.LogConfigurator.configure(LogConfigurator.java:92)
> at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.setupLogging(Bootstrap.java:131)
> at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:216)
> at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:32)
> Caused by: java.nio.file.NoSuchFileException: /usr/share/elasticsearch/config
> at sun.nio.fs.UnixException.translateToIOException(UnixException.java:86)
> at sun.nio.fs.UnixException.rethrowAsIOException(UnixException.java:102)
> at sun.nio.fs.UnixException.rethrowAsIOException(UnixException.java:107)
> at sun.nio.fs.UnixFileAttributeViews$Basic.readAttributes(UnixFileAttributeViews.java:55)
> at sun.nio.fs.UnixFileSystemProvider.readAttributes(UnixFileSystemProvider.java:144)
> at sun.nio.fs.LinuxFileSystemProvider.readAttributes(LinuxFileSystemProvider.java:99)
> at java.nio.file.Files.readAttributes(Files.java:1737)
> at java.nio.file.FileTreeWalker.getAttributes(FileTreeWalker.java:225)
> at java.nio.file.FileTreeWalker.visit(FileTreeWalker.java:276)
> at java.nio.file.FileTreeWalker.walk(FileTreeWalker.java:322)
> at java.nio.file.Files.walkFileTree(Files.java:2662)
> at org.elasticsearch.common.logging.log4j.LogConfigurator.resolveConfig(LogConfigurator.java:126)
> ... 4 more
> log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (node).
> log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
> log4j:WARN See http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/faq.html#noconfig for more info.
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tom\_jonge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ba0ec/32.png) [@tom\_jonge](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tom_jonge)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 2:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/6 "2015-09-15T14:07:14Z")

</div>

Update:  
For any future users running into the same issue. Make sure to check your index creation for watcher as show in [http://hadooptutorials.co.in/tutorials/elasticsearch/real-time-alerting-using-elasticsearch-watcher.html](http://hadooptutorials.co.in/tutorials/elasticsearch/real-time-alerting-using-elasticsearch-watcher.html)  
completes successfully. This was causing the above problem even though there were no logs to indicate as such.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 8:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/7 "2015-09-15T20:42:23Z")

</div>

Which index specifically are you referring to?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tom\_jonge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ba0ec/32.png) [@tom\_jonge](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tom_jonge)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 12:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/8 "2015-09-16T12:06:49Z")

</div>

Under the paragraph "Creating an index" in the linked tutorial. [http://localhost:9200/event](http://localhost:9200/event). Strangely enough this allowed ES to start with the mail configuration.

Issue is solved. On to new different issues.

Thanks for the help Warkolm!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:48pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/solved-mail-server-configuration-issues/28933/9 "2017-07-06T13:48:40Z")

</div>