# unavailableShardsException what should I do?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unavailableshardsexception-what-should-i-do/12767>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [July 12, 2013, 11:31am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unavailableshardsexception-what-should-i-do/12767 "2013-07-12T11:31:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bryan\_rasmussen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/bryan_rasmussen/32/874_2.png) [@bryan\_rasmussen](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/bryan_rasmussen)\
**Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 11:31am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unavailableshardsexception-what-should-i-do/12767/1 "2013-07-12T11:31:49Z")

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Well I have tried over the past few days to get some information as to  
what I should do about this unavailableShardsException I have, my  
situation is that I have indexed a couchdb db using river, now I would  
like to index another db so that I have two separate indexes and two  
separate rivers running.

When I do

curl -XPUT -d @elasticsearch.json  
'[http://localhost:9200/\_river/copycat\_content/\_meta](http://localhost:9200/_river/copycat_content/_meta)'

I get  
"error":"UnavailableShardsException[[\_river][0] [2] shardIt, [0]  
active : Timeout waiting for [1m], request: index  
{[\_river][copycat\_content][\_meta], source[{ "type" : "couchdb",  
"couchdb" : { "host" : "localhost", "port" :  
5984, "db" : "copycat\_content", "filter" : null  
}}]}]","status":503}

How do I fix this? Definining mapping beforehand did not work, and  
anyway I don't think I should have to do this by my understanding of  
the river documentation?

I have a working index already, holding 13 thousand documents.

I'm on mac, this is just a personal little development machine for testing.

Should I delete elasticsearch and start again? Is there a particular  
command I should run to do so, to clean everything up? Should I maybe  
just delete indexes and start again.

Thanks,  
Bryan Rasmussen

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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 6, 2017, 2:26am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unavailableshardsexception-what-should-i-do/12767/2 "2017-07-06T02:26:47Z")

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