Cancel a task
- POST /_tasks/{task_id}/_cancel
- POST /_tasks/_cancel
The task management API is new and should still be considered a beta feature. The API may change in ways that are not backwards compatible.
A task may continue to run for some time after it has been cancelled because it may not be able to safely stop its current activity straight away. It is also possible that Elasticsearch must complete its work on other tasks before it can process the cancellation. The get task information API will continue to list these cancelled tasks until they complete. The cancelled flag in the response indicates that the cancellation command has been processed and the task will stop as soon as possible.
To troubleshoot why a cancelled task does not complete promptly, use the get task information API with the ?detailed parameter to identify the other tasks the system is running.
You can also use the node hot threads API to obtain detailed information about the work the system is doing instead of completing the cancelled task.
For relocatable tasks, this API transparently follows the task across graceful shutdown relocations,
so callers can keep using the original task ID. The returned task reports its original_task_id and original_start_time_in_millis
if it is continuing work from an earlier task.
Required authorization
- Cluster privileges manage
Response
-
nodesmap string to object -
Task information grouped by node, if
group_bywas set tonode(the default). -
<string>object -
tasksmap string to objectrequired -
<string>object -
descriptionstring -
Human readable text that identifies the particular request that the task is performing. For example, it might identify the search request being performed by a search task. Other kinds of tasks have different descriptions, like
_reindexwhich has the source and the destination, or_bulkwhich just has the number of requests and the destination indices. Many requests will have only an empty description because more detailed information about the request is not easily available or particularly helpful in identifying the request. -
statusobject -
The internal status of the task, which varies from task to task. The format also varies. While the goal is to keep the status for a particular task consistent from version to version, this is not always possible because sometimes the implementation changes. Fields might be removed from the status for a particular request so any parsing you do of the status might break in minor releases.
-
original_task_idstring -
The task ID of the original task. Only present when the task is continuing the work of an earlier task that was running on a node which has since shut down (i.e. a relocatable task). For tasks that have not been relocated this is always equal to the task's own ID and is omitted from the response.