Troubleshoot Watcher

Elastic Stack ECE ECK Elastic Cloud Hosted Self Managed

If you get the Dynamic Mapping is Disabled error when you try to add a watch, verify that the index mappings for the .watches index are available. You can do that by submitting the following request:

 GET .watches/_mapping 

If the index mappings are missing, follow these steps to restore the correct mappings:

1. Stop the Elasticsearch node.

2. Add xpack.watcher.index.rest.direct_access : true to elasticsearch.yml.

3. Restart the Elasticsearch node.

4. Delete the .watches index:

    DELETE .watches 

5. Disable direct access to the .watches index:

   1. Stop the Elasticsearch node.
   2. Remove xpack.watcher.index.rest.direct_access : true from elasticsearch.yml.
   3. Restart the Elasticsearch node.

If you get an authentication error indicating that you need to continue the sign-in process from a web browser when Watcher attempts to send email, you need to configure Gmail to Allow Less Secure Apps to access your account.

If you have two-step verification enabled for your email account, you must generate and use an App Specific password to send email from Watcher. For more information, see:

• Gmail: Sign in using App Passwords
• Outlook.com: App passwords and two-step verification

Keep in mind that there’s no built-in validation of scripts that you add to a watch. Buggy or deliberately malicious scripts can negatively impact Watcher performance. For example, if you add multiple watches with buggy script conditions in a short period of time, Watcher might be temporarily unable to process watches until the bad watches time out.