I don't really know, that part was not written by me, but I'll try to find out. By the way, your trick with the env vars works like a charm 🙂

I updated my docker compose script to use that line and it does work around the issue I mentioned: So if I nuke all the ZK metadata (

docker-compose rm

) and then try to do

docker-compose up

it will fail like this:

manual-pinot-broker | 2021/11/19 09:50:45.374 ERROR [PinotServiceManager] [Start a Pinot [BROKER]] Failed to start Pinot Broker
manual-pinot-broker | org.apache.helix.HelixException: Cluster structure is not set up for cluster: PinotCluster
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.helix.manager.zk.ZKHelixManager.handleNewSession(ZKHelixManager.java:1124) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.helix.manager.zk.ZKHelixManager.createClient(ZKHelixManager.java:701) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.helix.manager.zk.ZKHelixManager.connect(ZKHelixManager.java:738) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.broker.broker.helix.BaseBrokerStarter.start(BaseBrokerStarter.java:195) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.service.PinotServiceManager.startBroker(PinotServiceManager.java:147) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.service.PinotServiceManager.startRole(PinotServiceManager.java:96) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.admin.command.StartServiceManagerCommand$1.lambda$run$0(StartServiceManagerCommand.java:276) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.admin.command.StartServiceManagerCommand.startPinotService(StartServiceManagerCommand.java:302) [pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.admin.command.StartServiceManagerCommand$1.run(StartServiceManagerCommand.java:276) [pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 2021/11/19 09:50:45.374 ERROR [StartServiceManagerCommand] [Start a Pinot [BROKER]] Failed to start a Pinot [BROKER] at 0.844 since launch
manual-pinot-broker | org.apache.helix.HelixException: Cluster structure is not set up for cluster: PinotCluster
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.helix.manager.zk.ZKHelixManager.handleNewSession(ZKHelixManager.java:1124) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.helix.manager.zk.ZKHelixManager.createClient(ZKHelixManager.java:701) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.helix.manager.zk.ZKHelixManager.connect(ZKHelixManager.java:738) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.broker.broker.helix.BaseBrokerStarter.start(BaseBrokerStarter.java:195) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.service.PinotServiceManager.startBroker(PinotServiceManager.java:147) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.service.PinotServiceManager.startRole(PinotServiceManager.java:96) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.admin.command.StartServiceManagerCommand$1.lambda$run$0(StartServiceManagerCommand.java:276) ~[pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.admin.command.StartServiceManagerCommand.startPinotService(StartServiceManagerCommand.java:302) [pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-broker | 	at org.apache.pinot.tools.admin.command.StartServiceManagerCommand$1.run(StartServiceManagerCommand.java:276) [pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar:0.9.0-cf8b84e8b0d6ab62374048de586ce7da21132906]
manual-pinot-server | 2021/11/19 09:50:45.431 INFO [StartServerCommand] [main] Executing command: StartServer -clusterName PinotCluster -serverHost null -serverPort 8098 -serverAdminPort 8097 -dataDir /tmp/data/pinotServerData -segmentDir /tmp/data/pinotSegments -zkAddress manual-zookeeper:2181
manual-pinot-server | 2021/11/19 09:50:45.446 INFO [StartServiceManagerCommand] [main] Executing command: StartServiceManager -clusterName PinotCluster -zkAddress manual-zookeeper:2181 -port -1 -bootstrapServices []
manual-pinot-server | 2021/11/19 09:50:45.446 INFO [StartServiceManagerCommand] [main] Starting a Pinot [SERVICE_MANAGER] at 0.41s since launch
manual-pinot-server | 2021/11/19 09:50:45.449 INFO [StartServiceManagerCommand] [main] Started Pinot [SERVICE_MANAGER] instance [ServiceManager_1ccda1d832ef_-1] at 0.413s since launch
manual-pinot-server | 2021/11/19 09:50:45.452 INFO [StartServiceManagerCommand] [Start a Pinot [SERVER]] Starting a Pinot [SERVER] at 0.416s since launch

And below you can see the broker restarting:

manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Class path contains multiple SLF4J bindings.
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/opt/pinot/lib/pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/opt/pinot/plugins/pinot-metrics/pinot-dropwizard/pinot-dropwizard-0.9.0-shaded.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/opt/pinot/plugins/pinot-metrics/pinot-yammer/pinot-yammer-0.9.0-shaded.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/opt/pinot/plugins/pinot-environment/pinot-azure/pinot-azure-0.9.0-shaded.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/opt/pinot/plugins/pinot-input-format/pinot-parquet/pinot-parquet-0.9.0-shaded.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/opt/pinot/plugins/pinot-file-system/pinot-s3/pinot-s3-0.9.0-shaded.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: See <http://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#multiple_bindings> for an explanation.
manual-pinot-broker | SLF4J: Actual binding is of type [org.apache.logging.slf4j.Log4jLoggerFactory]
manual-pinot-broker | WARNING: sun.reflect.Reflection.getCallerClass is not supported. This will impact performance.
manual-pinot-broker | WARNING: An illegal reflective access operation has occurred
manual-pinot-broker | WARNING: Illegal reflective access by org.codehaus.groovy.reflection.CachedClass (file:/opt/pinot/lib/pinot-all-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar) to method java.lang.Object.finalize()
manual-pinot-broker | WARNING: Please consider reporting this to the maintainers of org.codehaus.groovy.reflection.CachedClass
manual-pinot-broker | WARNING: Use --illegal-access=warn to enable warnings of further illegal reflective access operations
manual-pinot-broker | WARNING: All illegal access operations will be denied in a future release
manual-pinot-broker | 2021/11/19 09:50:47.719 INFO [StartBrokerCommand] [main] Executing command: StartBroker -brokerHost null -brokerPort 8099 -zkAddress manual-zookeeper:2181

"you're welcome", said the person who wrote the trick 😄