# Watcher cannot be started after upgrading Elasticsearch 7.x to Elasticsearch 8.x

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-cannot-be-started-after-upgrading-elasticsearch-7-x-to-elasticsearch-8-x/301041>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting\
**Created:** [March 30, 2022, 7:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-cannot-be-started-after-upgrading-elasticsearch-7-x-to-elasticsearch-8-x/301041 "2022-03-30T07:30:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![yohanwongso](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/yohanwongso/32/103684_2.png) [@yohanwongso](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/yohanwongso)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 7:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-cannot-be-started-after-upgrading-elasticsearch-7-x-to-elasticsearch-8-x/301041/1 "2022-03-30T07:30:18Z")

</div>

The watcher is stop working just after the Elasticsearch has been upgraded to version 8.x.

At the Kibana's Stack Management -\> Watcher, the state of all active watchers are **OK** , but the watchers haven't been triggered even thought the condition was met.

I have executed this API `GET _watcher/stats` and here is the result:

```auto
{
  "_nodes" : {
    "total" : 3,
    "successful" : 3,
    "failed" : 0
  },
  "cluster_name" : "elastic-cluster",
  "manually_stopped" : false,
  "stats" : [
    {
      "node_id" : "_Hh6Lke_RdOcox6fYy4_1w",
      "watcher_state" : "stopped",
      "watch_count" : 0,
      "execution_thread_pool" : {
        "queue_size" : 0,
        "max_size" : 0
      }
    },
    {
      "node_id" : "JwVTyt1XRcuUvpWN7YS7ig",
      "watcher_state" : "started",
      "watch_count" : 0,
      "execution_thread_pool" : {
        "queue_size" : 0,
        "max_size" : 0
      }
    },
    {
      "node_id" : "1qwaBLInRKCq2cjecv7H8w",
      "watcher_state" : "stopped",
      "watch_count" : 0,
      "execution_thread_pool" : {
        "queue_size" : 0,
        "max_size" : 0
      }
    }
  ]
}

```

I tried to start the watcher service by running this API `POST _watcher/_start` and the result was **acknowledged** , but there's nothing change with the status of the watcher.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![spinscale](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/spinscale/32/25011_2.png) [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 7:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-cannot-be-started-after-upgrading-elasticsearch-7-x-to-elasticsearch-8-x/301041/2 "2022-03-30T07:52:27Z")

</div>

First try: can you stop first, then check if all states are marked as stopped and then restart?

Second, can you take a look at Elasticsearch log files from the nodes that have not started watcher? Maybe there is something in there?

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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:** [April 27, 2022, 7:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-cannot-be-started-after-upgrading-elasticsearch-7-x-to-elasticsearch-8-x/301041/3 "2022-04-27T07:52:59Z")

</div>

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