After OS Patching - NetOps Kafka Service will no longer start

Products

• Network Observability

Issue/Introduction

[<REDACTED_USER>@<REDACTED_HOST> bin]$ sudo systemctl status netops-kafka.service
● netops-kafka.service - NetOps Kafka
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/netops-kafka.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2026-03-16 17:33:55 UTC; 32s ago
   Process: 238768 ExecStart=/DxNetOps/CA/netops-kafka/kafka/bin/kafka-server-start.sh /DxNetOps/CA/netops-kafka/kafka/config/server.properties (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Process: 238763 ExecStartPre=/DxNetOps/CA/netops-kafka/scripts/checkZookeeper.sh <REDACTED_FQDN> 2181 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 238768 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,693] INFO [ExpirationReaper-1-ElectLeader]: Starting (kafka.server.DelayedOperationPurgatory$ExpiredOperationReaper)
Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,693] INFO [ExpirationReaper-1-RemoteFetch]: Starting (kafka.server.DelayedOperationPurgatory$ExpiredOperationReaper)
Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,700] INFO [LogDirFailureHandler]: Starting (kafka.server.ReplicaManager$LogDirFailureHandler)
Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,700] INFO [AddPartitionsToTxnSenderThread-1]: Starting (kafka.server.AddPartitionsToTxnManager)
Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,701] WARN [ReplicaManager broker=1] Stopping serving replicas in dir /DxNetOps/CA/netops-kafka/kafka-data-logs with uuid None because th>
Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,705] WARN [ReplicaManager broker=1] Broker 1 stopped fetcher for partitions  and stopped moving logs for partitions  because they are in>
Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,705] WARN Stopping serving logs in dir /DxNetOps/CA/netops-kafka/kafka-data-logs (kafka.log.LogManager)
Mar 16 17:33:54 <REDACTED_HOST> kafka-server-start.sh[238768]: [2026-03-16 17:33:54,706] ERROR Shutdown broker because all log dirs in /DxNetOps/CA/netops-kafka/kafka-data-logs have failed (kafka.log.LogManager)
Mar 16 17:33:55 <REDACTED_HOST> systemd[1]: netops-kafka.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Mar 16 17:33:55 <REDACTED_HOST> systemd[1]: netops-kafka.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Cause

root took ownership of the kafka data logs

Resolution

Run:

chown -R <userid>:<group> /path/to/netops/kakfa/kafka-data-logs

And you may also need to run the same command against the zookeeper-logs directory.