Debian-family ES 5.3.1 conflict in default.path.data and path.data

[zepheiryan]

Per release notes, ES 5.3.1 now fails to start if you provide default.path.data and an array of path.data in order to correct a bug from 5.3.0 that merged the default into the array instead of ignoring it. However, default values for cookbook attributes that set those values are also preventing ES from starting, even though path.data isn't an array. I'm not sure if that's a bug in the bugfix or the way it's supposed to work, but after upgrading from 5.3.0 to 5.3.1 my logs now tell me I have to move files from /var/lib/elasticsearch (default.path.data) to /var/lib/elasticsearch (in elasticsearch.yaml, with path.data: "/var/lib/elasticsearch") in order to proceed. Ridiculousness of the warning message aside, I don't see a way to correct this from within the cookbook. There's no way to get rid of the path.data setting as using nil just gets you the cookbook default value, so my current, definitely not preferable, fix is to edit the packaged /etc/init.d/elasticsearch and remove the part of DAEMON_OPTS that sets default.data.path.

Advice on a better fix is welcome.

[martinb3]

Tagging the change that caused this -- elastic/elasticsearch#24099.

[martinb3]

It looks like they've realized the problem you're facing in elastic/elasticsearch#24285 and plan to fix it there.

[zepheiryan]

Fixed in 5.3.2, thanks for the pointers.