Exception during elastalert startup

We currently install elastalert into a Docker container using pip. Our newest builds now fail on startup with the following stack trace:

INFO:elastalert:Queried rule all errors from 2016-10-25 08:34 UTC to 2016-10-25 08:46 UTC: 0 hits
ERROR:root:Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 732, in run_all_rules
    num_matches = self.run_rule(rule, endtime, self.starttime)
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 577, in run_rule
    self.writeback('elastalert_status', body)
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 998, in writeback
    doc_type=doc_type, body=body)
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/elasticsearch/client/utils.py", line 71, in _wrapped
    return func(*args, params=params, **kwargs)
TypeError: create() takes at least 5 arguments (5 given)

ERROR:root:Uncaught exception running rule all errors: create() takes at least 5 arguments (5 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 174, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 1336, in <module>
    sys.exit(main(sys.argv[1:]))
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 1333, in main
    client.start()
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 695, in start
    self.run_all_rules()
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 736, in run_all_rules
    self.handle_uncaught_exception(e, rule)
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 1229, in handle_uncaught_exception
    self.handle_error('Uncaught exception running rule %s: %s' % (rule['name'], exception), {'rule': rule['name']})
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 1224, in handle_error
    self.writeback('elastalert_error', body)
  File "/opt/elastalert/elastalert/elastalert.py", line 998, in writeback
    doc_type=doc_type, body=body)
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/elasticsearch/client/utils.py", line 71, in _wrapped
TypeError: create() takes at least 5 arguments (5 given)

[SimonPNorra]

Thanks @amosshapira

I have a customized version of the elastalert Dockerfile and I did run into the same issue. I changed my base image to FROM iron/python:2.7.11

and added RUN pip install elasticsearch==1.3.0 in the line before

# Install Elastalert.
RUN python setup.py install && \
    pip install -e .

Now the image runs again.

Greetings

[amosshapira]

I’ve just verified today that the latest fix makes this unnecessary.