Kibana unable to retrieve version information from Elasticsearch nodes: missing authentication credentials for REST request

Question

I'm trying to Install Kibana 8.1.1 on Windows10. The thing is when it starts installions it stops on an error like:

[2022-04-16T01:16:59.744+00:00][ERROR][elasticsearch-service] Unable to retrieve version 
information from Elasticsearch nodes. security_exception: [security_exception] Reason: missing 
authentication credentials for REST request [/_nodes?filter_path=nodes..version%2Cnodes..http.publish_address%2Cnodes.*.ip] 

I tried to change the elastisearch.yml and kibana.yml files:

xpack.security.enabled: false

but it is still doesn't work.

I did add this folowing lines too

xpack.security.enabled: true  
xpack.monitoring.enabled: true  
xpack.monitoring.ui.enabled: true  
xpack.security.encryptionKey: "XXX"

still nothing.

I also removed the # on kibana.yml too before the elasticsearch.hosts: ["http://localhost:9200"]

Here is the content of the configuration files:

kibana.yml:

`server.port: 5601  
server.host: "localhost"  
server.name: "your-hostname"  
elasticsearch.hosts: ["http://localhost:9200"]`

elasticsearch.yml:

`cluster.name: my-application  
network.host: 192.168.0.1  
node.name: node-1  
discovery.seed_hosts: ["host1", "host2"]  
cluster.initial_master_nodes: ["node-1", "node-2"]`

Answer 1

A more detailed steps as below,

Step 1 is required only when you made some changes to both yml files.

1. Comment everything in elastic and Kibana yml and save
2. Start Elasticsearch
3. Open another command prompt from the directory elasticsearch-8.0.0\bin and run the below command.

Note: We are resetting password for user "kibana_system" not "elastic".

.\elasticsearch-reset-password.bat -u kibana_system --auto

This command will give you password for user "kibana_system". Copy and store the password somewhere.

4. Edit kibana yml file in kibana-8.0.0\bin directory by setting below values.

elasticsearch.username: "kibana_system"
elasticsearch.password: "the kibana_system password generated above, not the elastic password"

Then save the yml file.

5. start kibana, wait till you see everything is fine and no error.

6. open http://localhost:5601/app/home#/ in the browser. Enter username as "elastic" Enter the password as "the elastic password, not kibana password"