Kibana: xPack:defaultAdminEmail should be marked deprecated in the UI

[LeeDr]

See https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/22195

Kibana version: 6.5.0

Elasticsearch version: 6.5.0

Server OS version: Ubuntu

Browser version: Chrome

Browser OS version: Windows 10

Original install method (e.g. download page, yum, from source, etc.): tar.gz

Describe the bug: We let users go to Advanced Settings and enter xPack:defaultAdminEmail without any indication that it's deprecated, and then we log (only after it's used?) that it's deprecated in the the kibana log file.

Seems we should tell the user the setting is deprecated before they set it.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to Advanced Settings and find that there's no indication that xPack:defaultAdminEmail is deprecated
2. Set an email address in xPack:defaultAdminEmail
3. check log for deprecation warning (nothing yet)
4. trigger one of the built-in watcher alerts (starting up another node is one way)
5. Check that you do get the email.
6. Check that you also get the warning about the deprecation as shown below.

Expected behavior: Change the text that appears in the UI to say "DEPRECATED see ... some doc)

Screenshots (if relevant):

Errors in browser console (if relevant):

Provide logs and/or server output (if relevant):
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2018-11-08T22:00:17Z","tags":["warning","stats-collection"],"pid":3478,"message":"Monitoring is using xPack:defaultAdminEmail for cluster alert notifications, which will not be supported in Kibana 7.0. Please configure xpack.monitoring.cluster_alerts.email_notifications.email_address in your kibana.yml settings"}

Any additional context:

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-monitoring

[legrego]

Hey @LeeDr,

The xPack:defaultAdminEmail setting actually has 2 uses today:
1) Address to send cluster alert notifications from Monitoring.
2) Default address when creating a new Watcher.

While they are similar to each other, only #1 is deprecated. The setting itself will not be removed in 7.0, but it's usage as part of 1 will be.

Rather than marking the setting as deprecated, what if we were to change the description to something like:

Default recipient email address for creating a new Watcher.

[LeeDr]

I don't see it doing #2 above. Is it the From or To email? When I create a new watch and add an email action the To field is blank (not defaulted to that value as I thought it might).

[legrego]

@LeeDr should be used as the default "To e-mail" when creating a watcher alert notification:

[LeeDr]

Sorry, my mistake. That advanced setting does appear as the default email on a new watch.

[marius-dr]

We should at least update the description in Advanced Settings now in 7.x since it's wrong as Monitoring won't be using it.

[marius-dr]

also @elastic/stack-monitoring : was this supposed to be removed in 7.0? I still see the same warning about deprecation in the logs:

  log   [14:02:00.425] [warning][stats-collection] Monitoring is using xPack:defaultAdminEmail for cluster alert notifications, which will not be supported in Kibana 7.0. Please configure xpack.monitoring.cluster_alerts.email_notifications.email_address in your kibana.yml settings

[cachedout]

@marius-dr I believe it's in progress over here: https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/33603

[renshuki]

Is it possible to move this forward?
Having xPack:defaultAdminEmail with no deprecated mention or whatsoever in the UI is misleading.

[chrisronline]

This is probably too old to do anything about. This setting was deprecated during 6.x and completely removed in 7.0

[ypid-geberit]

Hi @chrisronline

This is probably too old to do anything about. This setting was deprecated during 6.x and completely removed in 7.0

I am confused about this statement. The setting is still present in Elastic 7.8 (tested locally) and 7.7 (https://demo.elastic.co/) with no deprecation note.

I then checked where this setting is actually used by the system watches. Seems Stack monitoring somehow copies it to .monitoring-kibana-7-* where painless ultimately uses it for alerting (ctx.payload.kibana_settings.hits.hits[0]._source.kibana_settings.xpack.default_admin_email)

Ref: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/advanced-options.html

Please give more details when closing an issue so that people finding this have more context.

[chrisronline]

Hi @ypid-geberit,

Thanks for raising your concerns.

You are right, this particular setting still does appear in 7.7 and 7.8, as https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/33603 was not backported, due to breaking change concerns.

So it is a broken experience in 7.x where the code no longer reads this setting due to https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/60796.

This was a mistake on our side and I apologize for not fully understanding that from the start. I'll reopen this ticket and we will work to add a proper deprecation notice for this behavior, as well as also updating the code to read from both locations again.

[ypid-geberit]

Thanks. Then only one thing is unclear to me. What is the recommended way to set the admin email (for the system watches) then? I only found https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud/current/ec-manage-kibana-settings.html xpack.monitoring.cluster_alerts.email_notifications.email_address. Setting this in Kibana seems confusing to me. The watches using this setting live in ES. The cluster settings would feel more appropriate to me as there also the email account is probably configured. Cluster settings are probably not accessible for watches.

[chrisronline]

The only way it will work (until we patch this) for 7.7 and beyond is to set it inside of kibana.yml under monitoring.cluster_alerts.email_notifications.email_address. We will have a fix for this soon so it will continue to work from the advanced setting, but that same PR will also mark that as deprecated and suggest to use the kibana.yml setting instead.

Does that help?

[igoristic]

@chrisronline Shouldn't the xpack prefix be removed (for monitoring settings) from this doc: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud/current/ec-manage-kibana-settings.html?

[chrisronline]

@igoristic Yes, but those older configs are only deprecated. We should ensure we update that before 8.0 is released though.

[ypid-geberit]

Does that help?

All clear, thank you :)

[igoristic]

Should of been closed by: https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/70280