Briefly, this error occurs when Elasticsearch fails to update the status of a watcher to stopped. This could be due to insufficient permissions, a network issue, or a problem with the watcher itself. To resolve this issue, you can try the following: 1) Check and adjust the user permissions if necessary, 2) Verify the network connectivity between the nodes, 3) Inspect the watcher for any configuration errors and correct them, and 4) Restart the Elasticsearch service.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” could not update watcher stopped status to [%s]; source [%s] ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: plugin, source.
Overview
When a document is sent for indexing, Elasticsearch indexes all the fields in the format of an inverted index, but it also keeps the original JSON document in a special field called _source.
Examples
Disabling source field in the index:
PUT /api-logs?pretty
{
"mappings": {
"_source": {
"enabled": false
}
}
}Store only selected fields as a part of _source field:
PUT api-logs
{
"mappings": {
"_source": {
"includes": [
"*.count",
"error_info.*"
],
"excludes": [
"error_info.traceback_message"
]
}
}
}Including only selected fields using source filtering:
GET api-logs/_search
{
"query": {
"match_all": {}
},
"_source": {
"includes": ["api_name","status_code", "*id"]
}
}Notes
The source field brings an overhead of extra storage space but serves special purposes such as:
- Return as a part of the response when a search query is executed.
- Used for reindexing purpose, update and update_by_query operations.
- Used for highlighting, if the field is not stored, it means the field is not set as “store to true” inside the mapping.
- Allows selection of fields to be returned.
The only concern with source field is the extra storage usage on disk. But this storage space used by source field can be optimized by changing compression level to best_compression. This setting is done using index.codec parameter.
Log Context
Log “could not update watcher stopped status to [%s]; source [%s]” classname is TransportWatcherServiceAction.java.
We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
}
}
@Override
public void onFailure(Exception e) {
logger.error(() -> format("could not update watcher stopped status to [%s]; source [%s]"; manuallyStopped; source); e);
listener.onFailure(e);
}
});
}
