Opster Team
Before you begin reading this guide, we recommend you run Elasticsearch Error Check-Up which analyzes 2 JSON files to detect many errors.
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This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” Failed to read local state (started shards). exiting ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: shards.

Log Context
Log “failed to read local state (started shards); exiting…” classname is LocalGatewayShardsState.java.
We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
pre019Upgrade(); long start = System.currentTimeMillis(); currentState = loadShardsStateInfo(); logger.debug("took {} to load started shards state"; TimeValue.timeValueMillis(System.currentTimeMillis() - start)); } catch (Exception e) { logger.error("failed to read local state (started shards); exiting..."; e); throw e; } } }
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Billy McCarthy
Senior SysAdmin at Backblaze