setup.dashboards.always_kibana doesn't work with Kibana 5.6

[andrewkroh]

Attempts to use -E setup.dashboards.always_kibana=true with Kibana 5.6 always result in an error. This is the code in question:

beats/libbeat/setup/kibana/client.go

Lines 172 to 182 in 6130ef3

	// The response returned by /api/status is different in Kibana 5.x than in Kibana 6.x
	err5x := json.Unmarshal(result, &kibanaVersion5x)
	if err5x != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("fail to unmarshal the response from GET %s/api/status. Response: %s. Kibana 5.x status api returns: %v. Kibana 6.x status api returns: %v",
	client.Connection.URL, truncateString(result), err5x, err)
	}
	client.version = kibanaVersion5x.Version
	return fmt.Errorf("fail to unmarshal the response from GET %s/api/status: %v. Response: %s",
	client.Connection.URL, err, truncateString(result))

After it successfully falls back to unmarshaling with the 5.x data type the code path always hits line 181 which is to return an error like the one below.

Exiting: Error importing Kibana dashboards: fail to create the Kibana loader: Error creating Kibana client: fail to get the Kibana version:fail to unmarshal the response from GET http://localhost:5601/api/status: json: cannot unmarshal string into Go struct field kibanaVersionResponse.version of type struct { Number string "json:\"number\""; Snapshot bool "json:\"build_snapshot\"" }. Response: {"name":"kibana","version":"5.6.6","buildNum":15605,"buildSha":"b67ac57661fc94df6ee476d0af6b3734211df61c","uuid":"25e5ec36-a8a6-4934-9010-5e78e2e345eb","status":{"overall":{"state":"green","title":"Green","nickname":"Looking good","icon":"success","s... (truncated)

[andrewkroh]

Discuss: https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-5-6-error-importing-kibana-dashboards-fail-to-get-the-kibana-version/115365

[jdambly]

+1 I am also having this issue with metricbeat

ansible@sv5knfs04:~$ sudo metricbeat setup --dashboards -E setup.dashboards.always_kibana=true -E setup.dashboards.kibana_index=.kibana-5.x
Exiting: Error importing Kibana dashboards: fail to create the Kibana loader: Error creating Kibana client: fail to get the Kibana version:fail to unmarshal the response from GET http://kibana01.mgt.sv5.nskope.net:5601/api/status: json: cannot unmarshal string into Go struct field kibanaVersionResponse.version of type struct { Number string "json:\"number\""; Snapshot bool "json:\"build_snapshot\"" }. Response: {"name":"kibana01","version":"5.6.5","buildNum":15592,"buildSha":"80f98787eb860a4e7ef9b6500cf84b65e331d1fc","uuid":"dd391d64-8a93-4821-a09a-5ed999f4e38b","status":{"overall":{"state":"green","title":"Green","nickname":"Looking good","icon":"success",... (truncated)
ansible@sv5knfs04:~$