# Unable to delete snapshot

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot/45836>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [March 30, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot/45836 "2016-03-30T18:04:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![widhalmt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/widhalmt/32/8237_2.png) [@widhalmt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/widhalmt)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot/45836/1 "2016-03-30T18:04:14Z")

</div>

Hi!

I just realised my automatic creating and destroying of snapshots does not work as expected. There are 2 old snapshots stuck I can not delete. All newer snapshots are created and destroyed as expected.

I created them with an older version (should be 1.7) and upgraded to 2.2

This is what I get:

```
[root@sally ~]# curl -XDELETE http://localhost:9200/_snapshot/backup/snapshot_2015.10.05?pretty
{
  "error" : {
    "root_cause" : [ {
      "type" : "not_x_content_exception",
      "reason" : "Compressor detection can only be called on some xcontent bytes or compressed xcontent bytes"
    } ],
    "type" : "not_x_content_exception",
    "reason" : "Compressor detection can only be called on some xcontent bytes or compressed xcontent bytes"
  },
  "status" : 500
}
[root@sally ~]# rpm -q elasticsearch
elasticsearch-2.2.1-1.noarch

```

Since this is my personal half playground/half production cluster consisting of just one node I could destroy all snapshots or even freshly install elasticsearch but I definitely would like to know what to do when I get this in a more critical setup.

Thanks in advance,  
Thomas

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![widhalmt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/widhalmt/32/8237_2.png) [@widhalmt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/widhalmt)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 6:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot/45836/2 "2016-03-30T18:06:26Z")

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By the way, it's the same, when I try to view all snapshots.

```
[root@sally ~]# curl -XGET http://localhost:9200/_snapshot/backup/_all?pretty
{
  "error" : {
    "root_cause" : [ {
      "type" : "snapshot_exception",
      "reason" : "[backup:snapshot_2015.10.05] failed to get snapshots"
    } ],
    "type" : "snapshot_exception",
    "reason" : "[backup:snapshot_2015.10.05] Snapshot could not be read",
    "caused_by" : {
      "type" : "snapshot_exception",
      "reason" : "[backup:snapshot_2015.10.05] failed to get snapshots",
      "caused_by" : {
        "type" : "not_x_content_exception",
        "reason" : "Compressor detection can only be called on some xcontent bytes or compressed xcontent bytes"
      }
    }
  },
  "status" : 500
}
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![edi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9de0a6/32.png) [@edi](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edi)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 8:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot/45836/3 "2016-12-18T08:27:19Z")

</div>

Hi,

did you receive any feedback or found a solution? I'm stuck with this problem too and found no solutioin yet ([Backups fail with exception concerning "Compressor detection" after upgrade](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/backups-fail-with-exception-concerning-compressor-detection-after-upgrade/68700))

Thanks,  
edi

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![widhalmt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/widhalmt/32/8237_2.png) [@widhalmt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/widhalmt)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot/45836/4 "2017-02-02T15:29:31Z")

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To be honest, I just deleted the whole repository and started from scratch. Since this was just my personal system it did not hurt as much as on an production system.

Sorry.

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<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 5, 2017, 10:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot/45836/5 "2017-07-05T22:03:39Z")

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