Unable to find a valid shard at indexPath – How to solve this Elasticsearch exception

Opster Team

August-23, Version: 6.8-8.9

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Briefly, this error occurs when Elasticsearch cannot locate a valid shard at the specified index path. This could be due to a misconfiguration, a missing or corrupted shard, or a network issue. To resolve this, you can try the following: 1) Verify the index path and ensure it’s correct. 2) Check the health of your Elasticsearch cluster and ensure all nodes are connected. 3) If a shard is missing or corrupted, you may need to restore it from a backup. 4) If it’s a network issue, check your network settings and connectivity.

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This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” unable to find a valid shard at [” + indexPath + “] ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: shard, index.

Log Context

Log “unable to find a valid shard at [” + indexPath + “]” class name is TruncateTranslogAction.java. We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :

 final Path translogPath = shardPath.resolveTranslog();
 final List commits;
 try {
 commits = DirectoryReader.listCommits(indexDirectory);
 } catch (IndexNotFoundException infe) {
 throw new ElasticsearchException("unable to find a valid shard at [" + indexPath + "]"; infe);
 } catch (IOException e) {
 throw new ElasticsearchException("unable to list commits at [" + indexPath + "]"; e);
 }  // Retrieve the generation and UUID from the existing data

 

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