elk stack error "unable to fetch mapping do you have indices matching the pattern"

Question

i am trying to setup ELK stack with collectd on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (so pretty much latest version of stack available) kibana is behind nginx proxy (followed this guide https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-elasticsearch-logstash-and-kibana-elk-stack-on-ubuntu-16-04)

and all looking good up until going to kibana dashboard

Index Patterns 

Warning No default index pattern. You must select or create one to continue.

unable to fetch mapping do you have indices matching the pattern

ELK stack is on one server so everything on localhost

Below are commands i ran to check my configurations

:~# curl 127.0.0.1:9200`
{
  "name" : "Flex",
  "cluster_name" : "elk-00",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "2.3.3",
    "build_hash" : "218bdf10790eef486ff2c41a3df5cfa32dadcfde",
    "build_timestamp" : "2016-05-17T15:40:04Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "5.5.0"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"


:~# service logstash configtest
Configuration OK

My question, very specific

1. How do i create defualt index file?

2. What is path of this default index file or located? also i hear about .kibana, where is this file .kibana located?

3. Why wasn't this index file automatically created for me? What do i do to make sure it automatically works without manually doing anything else?

Solution

So apparently this error occurs because elasticsearch has no data in yet one has to load data into it

followed this guide to load data into elasticsearch and everything starts to work like a charm!

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/getting-started.html

Comments

[Adiii]

In my case there was no default index. just set default index and evey thing start working again