Kafka Server - Could not find a 'KafkaServer' in JAAS - apache-kafka

Question

I have a standalone kafka broker that I'm trying to configure SASL for. Configurations are below. I'm trying to set up SASL_PLAIN authentication on the broker.
My understanding is that with the listener.name... configuration in the server.properties, I shouldn't need the jaas file. But I've experimented with one to see if that might be a better approach.
I have experimented with each of these commands, but both result in the same exception.
sudo bin/kafka-server-start etc/kafka/server.properties
sudo -Djava.security.auth.login.config=etc/kafka/kafka_server_jaas.conf bin/kafka-server-start etc/kafka/server.properties
the exception displayed is:
Fatal error during KafkaServer startup. Prepare to shutdown... Could
not find a 'KafkaServer' or 'sasl_plaintext.KafkaServer' entry in the
JAAS configuration. System property 'java.security.auth.login.config'
is not set
server.properties:
listeners=SASL_PLAINTEXT://0.0.0.0:9092
listener.security.protocol.map: SASL_PLAINTEXT:SASL_PLAINTEXT
listener.name.SASL_PLAINTEXT.plain.sasl.jaas.config:
org.apache.kafka.common.security.plain.PlainLoginModule required /
username="username" /
password="Password" /
user_username="Password";
advertised.listeners=SASL_PLAINTEXT://[ipaddress]:9092
sasl.enabled.mechanisms=PLAIN
sasl.mechanism.inter.broker.protocol=PLAIN
secutiy.inter.broker.protocol=SASL_PLAINTEXT
kafka_server_jaas.conf:
KafkaServer {
org.apache.kafka.common.security.plain.PlainLoginModule required
username="username"
password="Password"
user_username="Password";
};
I've spent a day looking at this already - has anyone else had experience with this problem?

Answer 1

You need to export a variable, not in-line the config to kafka-server-start (or sudo).
export KAFKA_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=/path/to/kafka_server_jaas.conf"
bin/kafka-server-start /path/to/server.properties
Ref. Confluent's sections on Kafka security

Answer 2

Putting my mistakes here for austerity:
Don't do your startup commands from the cli, put them in a .sh file and run from there:
For example, something like this:
zkstart
export KAFKA_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=etc/kafka/zookeeper_jaas.conf"
bin/zookeeper-server-start etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties &
kafkastart
export KAFKA_OPTS=-Djava.security.auth.login.config=etc/kafka/kafka_server_jaas.conf
bin/kafka-server-start etc/kafka/server.properties
If you still encounter an error related to the configs, check your _jaas files to ensure all the configuration sections in the error messages are present. If they are, it's likely the format isn't quite correct - check for the two semi-colons in each section and if that fails, try recreating the file entirely from scratch (or from a c&p from the documentation).
edit
So, the final solution for me was to add the export.... lines to the beginning of the corresponding kafka-server-start and zookeeper-server-start files. It took me a while before the 'everything is a file' finally clicked and I realized the script files were the actual basis for the services.