Must-share information (formatted with Markdown):
- which versions are you using (SonarQube Server / Community Build, Scanner, Plugin, and any relevant extension) - Community
- how is SonarQube deployed: zip, Docker, Helm - Docker
- what are you trying to achieve - Upgrade to latest
- what have you tried so far to achieve this - Tried upgrading to latest, got a message saying to upgrade to 25.12 first, then got the ElasticSearch error on that version.
sonarqube_1 | 2026.04.06 17:04:17 ERROR es[][o.e.b.Elasticsearch] fatal exception while booting Elasticsearch
sonarqube_1 | java.lang.IllegalStateException: cannot downgrade a node from version [8.19.8] to version [8.16.6]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.env.NodeMetadata.verifyUpgradeToCurrentVersion(NodeMetadata.java:135) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.env.NodeMetadata.upgradeToCurrentVersion(NodeMetadata.java:141) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.env.NodeEnvironment.loadNodeMetadata(NodeEnvironment.java:638) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.env.NodeEnvironment.(NodeEnvironment.java:335) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.node.NodeConstruction.validateSettings(NodeConstruction.java:533) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.node.NodeConstruction.prepareConstruction(NodeConstruction.java:277) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.node.Node.(Node.java:200) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch$2.(Elasticsearch.java:240) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.initPhase3(Elasticsearch.java:240) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:75) ~[elasticsearch-8.16.6.jar:?]
sonarqube_1 | ERROR: Elasticsearch did not exit normally - check the logs at /opt/sonarqube/logs/sonarqube.log
sonarqube_1 |
sonarqube_1 | ERROR: Elasticsearch died while starting up, with exit code 1
sonarqube_1 | 2026.04.06 17:04:17 WARN app[][o.s.a.p.AbstractManagedProcess] Process exited with exit value [ElasticSearch]: 1
sonarqube_1 | 2026.04.06 17:04:17 INFO app[][o.s.a.SchedulerImpl] Process[ElasticSearch] is stopped
sonarqube_1 | 2026.04.06 17:04:17 INFO app[][o.s.a.SchedulerImpl] SonarQube is stopped