Misleading license log messages with a fresh Basic installation

[xeraa]

Kibana version: 7.11.1

Elasticsearch version: 7.11.1

Server OS version: Ubuntu 20.04

Browser version: Chrome

Browser OS version: Latest

Original install method (e.g. download page, yum, from source, etc.): tar.gz but same for Docker images and others

Describe the bug: When starting a fresh cluster in Basic (no trial started), without configuring anything related to Watcher or CCR, Kibana's log still includes the following messages:

  log   [20:53:46.404] [info][plugins][watcher] Your basic license does not support watcher. Please upgrade your license.
  log   [20:53:46.416] [info][crossClusterReplication][plugins] Your basic license does not support crossClusterReplication. Please upgrade your license.

Especially for new users this is unexpected and confusing. We shouldn't print Please upgrade your license if this isn't actually necessary.

Steps to reproduce: Start a fresh installation and watch the Kibana logs

Expected behavior: Don't log things that haven't been configured and are only confusing for users starting a cluster.

Screenshots (if relevant): none

Errors in browser console (if relevant): none

Provide logs and/or server output (if relevant):

  log   [20:53:45.336] [info][plugins-system] Starting [101] plugins: [taskManager,licensing,globalSearch,globalSearchProviders,code,usageCollection,xpackLegacy,telemetryCollectionManager,telemetry,telemetryCollectionXpack,kibanaUsageCollection,securityOss,newsfeed,mapsLegacy,kibanaLegacy,translations,share,legacyExport,embeddable,uiActionsEnhanced,expressions,charts,esUiShared,bfetch,data,home,observability,console,consoleExtensions,apmOss,searchprofiler,painlessLab,grokdebugger,management,indexPatternManagement,advancedSettings,fileUpload,savedObjects,visualizations,visTypeVislib,visTypeVega,visTypeTimeseries,visTypeTimeseriesEnhanced,visTypeTimelion,features,licenseManagement,dataEnhanced,watcher,canvas,visTypeTagcloud,visTypeTable,visTypeMetric,visTypeMarkdown,tileMap,regionMap,mapsOss,lensOss,inputControlVis,graph,timelion,dashboard,dashboardEnhanced,visualize,discover,discoverEnhanced,savedObjectsManagement,spaces,security,savedObjectsTagging,maps,lens,reporting,lists,encryptedSavedObjects,dashboardMode,cloud,upgradeAssistant,snapshotRestore,fleet,indexManagement,rollup,remoteClusters,crossClusterReplication,indexLifecycleManagement,enterpriseSearch,ml,beatsManagement,transform,ingestPipelines,eventLog,actions,alerts,triggersActionsUi,stackAlerts,securitySolution,case,infra,monitoring,logstash,apm,uptime]
  log   [20:53:46.404] [info][plugins][watcher] Your basic license does not support watcher. Please upgrade your license.
  log   [20:53:46.416] [info][crossClusterReplication][plugins] Your basic license does not support crossClusterReplication. Please upgrade your license.
  log   [20:53:46.433] [info][kibana-monitoring][monitoring][monitoring][plugins] Starting monitoring stats collection
  log   [20:53:48.511] [info][listening] Server running at https://0.0.0.0:5601
  log   [20:53:49.216] [info][server][Kibana][http] http server running at https://0.0.0.0:5601

Any additional context: This was confusing enough for a user to disable replicas because of the CCR message — https://twitter.com/0111010A/status/1373729476069167110

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-core (Team:Core)

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/es-ui (Team:Elasticsearch UI)

[pgayvallet]

cc to @elastic/es-ui, which own both plugins

[cjcenizal]

@elastic/kibana-core I'm moving this issue over to your area because I believe this message is being emitted by the licensing plugin: https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/master/x-pack/plugins/licensing/common/license.ts#L130

Happy to chat about this if I'm mistaken!

[pgayvallet]

The message is coming from licensing. The fact that it's outputted in the logs is not.

watcher:

kibana/x-pack/plugins/watcher/server/plugin.ts

Lines 101 to 112 in 3b3327d

	licensing.license$.subscribe(async (license) => {
	const { state, message } = license.check(PLUGIN.ID, PLUGIN.MINIMUM_LICENSE_REQUIRED);
	const hasMinimumLicense = state === 'valid';
	if (hasMinimumLicense && license.getFeature(PLUGIN.ID)) {
	this.log.info('Enabling Watcher plugin.');
	this.licenseStatus = {
	hasRequired: true,
	};
	} else {
	if (message) {
	this.log.info(message);
	}

crossClusterReplication

kibana/x-pack/plugins/cross_cluster_replication/server/services/license.ts

Lines 46 to 56 in 4584a8b

	if (hasRequiredLicense) {
	this.licenseStatus = { isValid: true };
	} else {
	this.licenseStatus = {
	isValid: false,
	message: message || defaultErrorMessage,
	};
	if (message) {
	logger.info(message);
	}
	}

Core is not responsible for what plugins decide to do with a license check result and/or message. AFAIK these two plugins are the only ones behaving that way.

[cjcenizal]

Thanks @pgayvallet! Do you know what the intention of that message from licensing is? Is it intended to be logged? If not, is it surfaced to users some other way? I'm trying to understand the UX we want users to have for plugins unsupported by the current license and how the pieces we're considering here relate to that.

[joshdover]

Hi @cjcenizal!

We just discussed this in our weekly sync and decided that long-term we should probably remove this message key from the return type to encourage plugins to craft the best end-user experience here. Since this low-level licensing API itself does not know exactly where the information is being consumed, it can't provide a default experience that works for all use cases.

For now, I think it makes sense for these ES UI plugins to only log this message when a license-gated API is actually called, inside the guardApiRoute function that you have. Do you think that makes sense?

[cjcenizal]

@joshdover Makes sense! Thanks for clarifying and thanks for the guidance. We'll log the message inside guardApiRoute and also define the message within each plugin, to remove the dependency on the message key.