Running into LeaderNotAvailableException when using Kafka 0.8.1 with Zookeeper 3.4.6

Kafka uses an external coordination framework (by default Zookeeper) to maintain configuration. It seems the configuration is now out-of-sync with the Kafka log data. In this case, I’d remove affected topic data and related Zookeeper data.

For Test Environment:

1. Stop Kafka-server and Zookeeper-server
2. Remove the data directories of both services, by default they are /tmp/kafka-log and /tmp/zookeeper.
3. Start Kafka-server and Zookeeper-server again
4. Create a new topic

Now you are able to work with the topic again.

For Production Environment:

As the Kafka topics are stored in different directories, you should remove particular directories. You should also remove /brokers/{broker_id}/topics/{broken_topic} from Zookeeper by using a Zookeeper client.

Please read Kafka documentation carefully to make sure the configuration structure, before you do anything stupid. Kafka is rolling out a delete topic feature (KAFKA-330), so that the problem can be solved more easily.