Sporadic "An unexpected error occurred" while starting up logstash

[orpiske]

I am facing a, possible, issue with logstash 1.2.1. Sporadically, when starting it up, I receive the following error:

java -jar logstash-1.2.1-flatjar.jar agent -f conf/logstash.conf -- web
----------
Using milestone 2 input plugin 'file'. This plugin should be stable, but if you see strange behavior, please let us know! For more information on plugin milestones, see http://logstash.net/docs/1.2.1/plugin-milestones {:level=>:warn}
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| An unexpected error occurred. This is probably a bug.   |
| You can find help with this problem in a few places:    |
...
The error reported is: 
  pattern %{GREEDYDATA:message_id} not defined

My configuration file looks like this:

input {
       file {
        type => "my-component"
        path => [ "/path/to/my/log/directory/*.log" ]
        add_field => [ "API", "mycomponent"]
    }
      ...
}
filter {

    if [type] == "my-component" { 
        grok {  
            match => [ "message", "(%{GREEDYDATA:message_id}) %{TIMESTAMP_ISO8601:log_timestamp} %{LOGLEVEL:loglevel} %{GREEDYDATA:message_remainder}" ]
            add_field => ["raw_message", "%{@message}"]
        }
        mutate {
            replace => ["message", "%{message_remainder}" ]
        }   
        multiline {
            pattern => "^\s"
            what => "previous"
        }
    }
}

output {
    elasticsearch { embedded => true }
}

It works if I kill it and start it again.

[mirkokiefer]

Just had the same problem in v1.2.2.

[electrical]

The issue is the 'web' part.
For some reason it causes it grok to lose the pattern dir.

best solution we have for now is to run the web part separately