Logstash v2.2.0 fails to start as a service - service

Question

+ PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
+ export PATH
+ id -u
+ [ 0 -ne 0 ]
+ name=logstash
+ pidfile=/var/run/logstash.pid
+ LS_USER=logstash
+ LS_GROUP=logstash
+ LS_HOME=/var/lib/logstash
+ LS_HEAP_SIZE=1g
+ LS_LOG_DIR=/var/log/logstash
+ LS_LOG_FILE=/var/log/logstash/logstash.log
+ LS_CONF_DIR=/etc/logstash/conf.d
+ LS_OPEN_FILES=16384
+ LS_NICE=19
+ LS_OPTS=
+ [ -r /etc/default/logstash ]
+ . /etc/default/logstash
+ KILL_ON_STOP_TIMEOUT=0
+ [ -r /etc/sysconfig/logstash ]
+ program=/opt/logstash/bin/logstash
+ args=agent -f /etc/logstash/conf.d -l /var/log/logstash/logstash.log
+ status
+ [ -f /var/run/logstash.pid ]
+ cat /var/run/logstash.pid
+ pid=12716
+ kill -0 12716
+ return 2
+ code=2
+ [ 2 -eq 0 ]
+ start
+ LS_JAVA_OPTS= -Djava.io.tmpdir=/var/lib/logstash
+ HOME=/var/lib/logstash
+ export PATH HOME LS_HEAP_SIZE LS_JAVA_OPTS LS_USE_GC_LOGGING
+ id -Gn logstash
+ + sed s/,$//
tr ,
+ echo
+ SGROUPS=logstash
+ [ ! -z logstash ]
+ EXTRA_GROUPS=--groups logstash
+ ulimit -n 16384
+ echo 22073
+ echo logstash started.
logstash started.
+ return 0
+ code=0
+ exit 0
+ nice -n 19 chroot --userspec logstash:logstash --groups logstash / sh -c
cd /var/lib/logstash
ulimit -n 16384
exec "/opt/logstash/bin/logstash" agent -f /etc/logstash/conf.d -l /var/log/logstash/logstash.log
The above is the command output when the logstash service is started.
(Got this by adding -x switch to the start of the init.d script - #!/bin/sh -x)
Logstash v2.2.0 is installed using the DEB package on Ubuntu 14.04
When I run the exec command that is used by the init script (as seen in the above output) logstash startups pretty fine and works flawlessly
"/opt/logstash/bin/logstash" agent -f /etc/logstash/conf.d -l /var/log/logstash/logstash.log
There is something in the init.d service script that causes logstash to fail as a service. I suspect the nice command that the init script uses.
Do you guys see any issues with the 'nice' command that is being used in the init script ?
+ nice -n 19 chroot --userspec logstash:logstash --groups logstash / sh -c
cd /var/lib/logstash
ulimit -n 16384
exec "/opt/logstash/bin/logstash" agent -f /etc/logstash/conf.d -l /var/log/logstash/logstash.log

Answer 1

When you have uninstalled older version, the logstash user and group was also removed. Now with new installation a new logstash user and group was created with different uid and gid. Yet the ownership of common logstash directories belongs to the old logstash uid and gid.
Now when you start new logstash it tries to read/write to this dir and fails hence logstash not running.
Try changing ownership of these dir and start logstash
chown -R logstash:logstash /var/log/logstash
chown -R logstash:logstash /var/lib/logstash
chown -R logstash:logstash /etc/logstash
rm -rf /var/run/logstash.pid
/etc/init.d/logstash start