Kafka consumer not able to consume messages using bootstrap server name

Question

I am facing an issue while consuming message using the bootstrap-server i.e. Kafka server. Any idea why is it not able to consume messages without zookeeper?

• Kafka Version: kafka_2.11-1.0.0
• Zookeeper Version: kafka_2.11-1.0.0
• Zookeeper Host and port: zkp02.mp.com:2181
• Kafka Host and port: kfk03.mp.com:9092

Producing some message:

[kfk03.mp.com ~]$ /bnsf/kafka/bin/kafka-console-producer.sh --broker-list kfk03.mp.com:9092 --topic test
>hi
>hi

Consumer not able to consume messages if I give –-bootstrap-server:

[kfk03.mp.com ~]$
/bnsf/kafka/bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server kfk03.mp.com:9092 --topic test --from-beginning

Consumer able to consume messages when --zookeeper server is given instead of --bootstrap-server -:

[kfk03.mp.com ~]$ /bnsf/kafka/bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --zookeeper zkp02.mp.com:2181 --topic test --from-beginning

Using the ConsoleConsumer with old consumer is deprecated and will be removed in a future major release. Consider using the new consumer by passing [bootstrap-server] instead of [zookeeper].

{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
hi
{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
{"properties": {"messageType": "test", "sentDateTime": "2018-02-25T21:46:00.000+0000"}, "name": "Uttam Anand", "age": 29}
hi
hi
uttam
hi
hi
hi
hello
hi
^CProcessed a total of 17 messages

Answer 1

While consuming messages from kafka using bootstrap-server parameter, the connection happens via the kafka server instead of zookeeper. Kafka broker stores offset details in __consumer_offsets topic.

Check if __consumer_offsets is present in your topics list. If it's not there, check kafka logs to find the reason.

We faced a similar issue. In our case the __consumer_offsets was not created because of the following error:

ERROR [KafkaApi-1001] Number of alive brokers '1' does not meet the required replication factor '3' for the offsets topic (configured via 'offsets.topic.replication.factor').