Briefly, this error occurs when Elasticsearch tries to perform an operation on a repository that is not in a ‘started’ state. This could be due to the repository being in the process of initialization or being shut down. To resolve this issue, you can either wait for the repository to reach the ‘started’ state if it’s initializing, or restart the repository if it’s shut down. Additionally, check the repository’s configuration settings to ensure it’s set to automatically start upon system boot.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” repository is not in started state ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: blobstore, repository, repositories.
Overview
An Elasticsearch snapshot provides a backup mechanism that takes the current state and data in the cluster and saves it to a repository (read snapshot for more information). The backup process requires a repository to be created first. The repository needs to be registered using the _snapshot endpoint, and multiple repositories can be created per cluster. The following repository types are supported:
Repository types
| Repository type | Configuration type |
|---|---|
| Shared file system | Type: “fs” |
| S3 | Type : “s3” |
| HDFS | Type :“hdfs” |
| Azure | Type: “azure” |
| Google Cloud Storage | Type : “gcs” |
Examples
To register an “fs” repository:
PUT _snapshot/my_repo_01
{
"type": "fs",
"settings": {
"location": "/mnt/my_repo_dir"
}
}Notes and good things to know
- S3, HDFS, Azure and Google Cloud require a relevant plugin to be installed before it can be used for a snapshot.
- The setting, path.repo: /mnt/my_repo_dir needs to be added to elasticsearch.yml on all the nodes if you are planning to use the repo type of file system. Otherwise, it will fail.
- When using remote repositories, the network bandwidth and repository storage throughput should be high enough to complete the snapshot operations normally, otherwise you will end up with partial snapshots.
Log Context
Log “repository is not in started state” class name is BlobStoreRepository.java. We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
repoDataLoadDeduplicator.execute(listener);
}
} private RepositoryException notStartedException() {
return new RepositoryException(metadata.name(); "repository is not in started state");
} // Listener used to ensure that repository data is only initialized once in the cluster state by #initializeRepoGenerationTracking
private ListenableActionFuture repoDataInitialized;
