RE: AoK: Kafka Pod not Staring

Jesse Knight — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 17:14:12 GMT

Not that I know anything about AoK, but fully understand why these types of null/null errors are irritating. So I posed this error to ChatGPT 5 Thinking with some extra problem solving related guidance in the prompt.

For some reason it believes this exact error is related to log4j, but also concludes that it is not the root cause of your issue. I've included a link it provided at the end to help you troubleshoot, but also keep in mind that Appian's setup might be different from that article.

I only gave the prompt the last part of your error ("No configuration found ...") and its response contained the full error (starting with Reconfiguration....). So it might be the headed in the right direction. Did you attempt to customize the log4j properties?

Short answer: that message is a Log4j2 reconfiguration error, not a ZooKeeper problem. It usually means the Kafka process (or a Kafka CLI tool that Appian invokes) can’t find a Log4j2 config file, so logging falls back and prints:
Reconfiguration failed: No configuration found for '67424e82' at 'null' in 'null'. Fix the logging first so you can see the real Kafka/ZooKeeper errors—then verify the broker and wiring.

Why that exact message appears

The hex like 67424e82 is a Log4j2 internal identifier. The message means Log4j couldn’t find a config file (path shows as null). It commonly shows up with Kafka 3.x/4.x tools if KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS isn’t set correctly. Once you point to a valid log4j2.yaml/log4j2.properties, the error disappears and your logs will show the real root cause (if any). Source: skybert.net