Running into LeaderNotAvailableException when using Kafka 0.8.1 with Zookeeper 3.4.6

I installed the stable version of kafka (0.8.1 with 2.9.2 Scala) as per their website and am running it with a 3 node zookeeper ensemble (3.4.6). I tried to create a test topic but keep seeing that there is no leader assigned to the partition of the topic:

[kafka_2.9.2-0.8.1]$ ./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper <zookeeper_ensemble> --describe --topic test-1
Topic:test-1    PartitionCount:1    ReplicationFactor:3 Configs:
    Topic: test-1   Partition: 0    **Leader: none**    Replicas: 0,1,2 **Isr:** 

I tried to write to the topic anyway using the console producer but ran into the LeaderNotAvailableException exception:

[kafka_2.9.2-0.8.1]$ ./kafka-console-producer.sh --broker-list <broker_list> --topic test-1

hello world

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,297] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,321] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,322] ERROR Failed to collate messages by topic, partition due to: Failed to fetch topic metadata for topic: test-1 (kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,445] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,467] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,467] ERROR Failed to collate messages by topic, partition due to: Failed to fetch topic metadata for topic: test-1 (kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,590] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,612] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,612] ERROR Failed to collate messages by topic, partition due to: Failed to fetch topic metadata for topic: test-1 (kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,731] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,753] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,754] ERROR Failed to collate messages by topic, partition due to: Failed to fetch topic metadata for topic: test-1 (kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,876] WARN Error while fetching metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic test-1 -> 
No partition metadata for topic test-1 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [test-1]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException  (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,877] ERROR Failed to send requests for topics test-1 with correlation ids in [0,8] (kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler)

[2014-04-22 11:58:48,878] ERROR Error in handling batch of 1 events (kafka.producer.async.ProducerSendThread)
kafka.common.FailedToSendMessageException: Failed to send messages after 3 tries.
    at kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler.handle(DefaultEventHandler.scala:90)
    at kafka.producer.async.ProducerSendThread.tryToHandle(ProducerSendThread.scala:104)
    at kafka.producer.async.ProducerSendThread$$anonfun$processEvents$3.apply(ProducerSendThread.scala:87)
    at kafka.producer.async.ProducerSendThread$$anonfun$processEvents$3.apply(ProducerSendThread.scala:67)
    at scala.collection.immutable.Stream.foreach(Stream.scala:547)
    at kafka.producer.async.ProducerSendThread.processEvents(ProducerSendThread.scala:66)
    at kafka.producer.async.ProducerSendThread.run(ProducerSendThread.scala:44)

I should also state that this was working initially for a few days and then suddenly any topic that was created had this missing leader problem.

Kafka uses an external coordination framework (by default Zookeeper) to maintain configuration. It seems the configuration is now out-of-sync with the Kafka log data. In this case, I'd remove affected topic data and related Zookeeper data.

For Test Environment:

1. Stop Kafka-server and Zookeeper-server
2. Remove the data directories of both services, by default they are /tmp/kafka-log and /tmp/zookeeper.
3. Start Kafka-server and Zookeeper-server again
4. Create a new topic

Now you are able to work with the topic again.

For Production Environment:

As the Kafka topics are stored in different directories, you should remove particular directories. You should also remove /brokers/{broker_id}/topics/{broken_topic} from Zookeeper by using a Zookeeper client.

Please read Kafka documentation carefully to make sure the configuration structure, before you do anything stupid. Kafka is rolling out a delete topic feature (KAFKA-330), so that the problem can be solved more easily.

I had the same issue. It turns out that Kafka requires the machine's hostname to be resolveable to connect back to itself.

I updated the hostname on my machine and, after a restart of zookeeper and kafka, the topic could be written to correctly.

I had solved this problem by adding an entry into /etc/hosts for 127.0.0.1 with fully qualified host name:

127.0.0.1       x4239433.your.domain.com x4239433

Producer and consumer started working fine.

I had the same problem. In the end I had to delete stop the Kafka nodes, then follow the advice here on how to delete Kafka topics. Once I had got rid of the broken topics, I was able to start Kafka again successfully.

I would like to know if there is a better approach, and how to avoid this happening in the future.

I have ran into this problem couple times and finally figured out why I was having the issue. I am going to add the findings here too. I am on Linux VM, short answer is, I was having this issue since my VM got an new IP. If you look under the config files and open up the server.properties you will see this line

advertised.host.name=xx.xx.xx.xxx or localhost.

Once I have fixed that, everything started to work properly. I am using 0.9.0.0 version.

I hope this helps someone.