No active authentication - Common causes and quick fixes

No active authentication – How to solve this Elasticsearch exception

Opster Team

August-23, Version: 7.2-8.9

Briefly, this error occurs when Elasticsearch cannot authenticate a user due to missing or incorrect authentication credentials. This could be due to a misconfiguration in the Elasticsearch security settings or the absence of necessary authentication headers in the request. To resolve this issue, ensure that the correct authentication credentials are provided in the request. If using X-Pack security, check the configuration in elasticsearch.yml file. Also, ensure that the user has the necessary permissions to perform the requested operation.

This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” No active authentication ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: plugin.

Log Context

Log “No active authentication” class name is TransportOpenIdConnectLogoutAction.java. We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :

 private void validateAuthenticationAndMetadata(Authentication authentication; Map tokenMetadata) {
 if (tokenMetadata == null) {
 throw new ElasticsearchSecurityException("Authentication did not contain metadata");
 }
 if (authentication == null) {
 throw new ElasticsearchSecurityException("No active authentication");
 }
 final User user = authentication.getEffectiveSubject().getUser();
 if (user == null) {
 throw new ElasticsearchSecurityException("No active user");
 }