beat.sh script cannot use a custom config path

[tsg]

In alpha5 we added the option to use the -c multiple times. This somewhat breaks the beat.sh scripts that we put in the /usr/bin for DEB/RPM installations (the beat binary is not in $PATH by default).

Here is an example of a script:

#!/bin/bash

# Script to run {.beat_name} in foreground with the same path settings that
# the init script / systemd unit file would do.

/usr/share/filebeat/bin/filebeat -e \
  -c /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml \
  -path.home /usr/share/filebeat \
  -path.config /etc/filebeat \
  -path.data /var/lib/filebeat \
  $@

One of the things that was possible in alpha4 was to specify a custom config file, e.g.:

filebeat.sh -e -c filebeat.yml

This was overriding the default config file from the script with filebeat.yml. With alpha5, however, the Beat combines the two configuration files, which comes as a surprise for the user.

[tsg]

IMO, the best solution would be if the default value for -c is filebeat.yml which is searched in path.config. Then we don't need to put it explicitly in the script, and the user can override it with -c passed to the script.

Have to check if this is a viable solution, I know we had issues with this approach before, but I think that was before introducing the config paths.

[urso]

I think by default (if no -c is given), filebeat should load config file from ${path.config}/filebeat.yml by default. Solution might be to remove -c from script altogether. If removing -c doesn’t work properly we indeed have a bug in filebeat itself.

[tsg]

Fixed by #2245.