# Watcher Fails or gets stuck posting to Slack
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-fails-or-gets-stuck-posting-to-slack/45922
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting
**Created:** [March 31, 2016, 11:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-fails-or-gets-stuck-posting-to-slack/45922 "2016-03-31T11:02:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@bwgriffith](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/bwgriffith)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2016, 11:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-fails-or-gets-stuck-posting-to-slack/45922/1 "2016-03-31T11:02:10Z")
I have a watch that posts to slack as an action. When it is triggered it occasionally works (for a few days then just stops randomly), however, **most** of the time it fails. Any ideas?
Below is the error and stack trace
"id": "notify-slack",
"type": "slack",
"status": "failure",
"slack": {
"account": "monitoring",
"sent\_messages": [
{
"status": "failure",
"reason": "SSLHandshakeException[sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target]; nested: ValidatorException[PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target]; nested: SunCertPathBuilderException[unable to find valid certification path to requested target];
Finally today it flat out got stuck in execution, stack trace is below:
```
{
"watcher_state":"started",
"watch_count":6,
"execution_thread_pool":{
"queue_size":0,
"max_size":160
},
"current_watches":[
{
"watch_id":"esb_fault",
"watch_record_id":"esb_fault_1262-2016-03-31T04:23:50.578Z",
"triggered_time":"2016-03-31T04:23:50.578Z",
"execution_time":"2016-03-31T04:23:50.578Z",
"execution_phase":"actions",
"stack_trace":[
"java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead0(Native Method)",
"java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead(SocketInputStream.java:116)",
"java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java:170)",
"java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java:141)",
"sun.security.ssl.InputRecord.readFully(InputRecord.java:465)",
"sun.security.ssl.InputRecord.read(InputRecord.java:503)",
"sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.readRecord(SSLSocketImpl.java:973)",
"sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.performInitialHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1375)",
"sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1403)",
"sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1387)",
"sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsClient.afterConnect(HttpsClient.java:559)",
"sun.net.www.protocol.https.AbstractDelegateHttpsURLConnection.connect(AbstractDelegateHttpsURLConnection.java:185)",
"sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getOutputStream0(HttpURLConnection.java:1283)",
"sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getOutputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1258)",
"sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getOutputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:250)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.support.http.HttpClient.doExecute(HttpClient.java:195)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.support.http.HttpClient.execute(HttpClient.java:126)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.actions.slack.service.SlackAccount.send(SlackAccount.java:121)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.actions.slack.service.SlackAccount.send(SlackAccount.java:77)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.actions.slack.ExecutableSlackAction.execute(ExecutableSlackAction.java:67)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.actions.ActionWrapper.execute(ActionWrapper.java:106)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.execution.ExecutionService.executeInner(ExecutionService.java:388)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.execution.ExecutionService.execute(ExecutionService.java:273)",
"org.elasticsearch.watcher.execution.ExecutionService$WatchExecutionTask.run(ExecutionService.java:438)",
"java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)",
"java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)",
"java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)"
]
}
],
"queued_watches":[
],
"manually_stopped":false
}
```
---
### Author:  [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2016, 7:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-fails-or-gets-stuck-posting-to-slack/45922/2 "2016-04-01T07:05:23Z")
Hey,
are there any stack traces in your master node log file for the time being?
Did you change any of the http connection/readtimeouts that can be configured as a global default? Settings I talk about are `watcher.http.default_connection_timeout` and `watcher.http.default_read_timeout`
Also you can try and restart watcher using the `/_watcher/restart` endpoint to clear out the stuck watches.
--Alex
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/watcher-fails-or-gets-stuck-posting-to-slack/45922/3 "2017-07-06T13:46:04Z")