You could have an issue with certificates...if you enable DEBUG for the client, you should be able to determine what it's having issues with: cp /etc/kafka/conf/tools-log4j.properties /var/tmp sed -i -e 's/INFO/DEBUG/g' /var/tmp/tools-log4j.properties export KAFKA_OPTS="-Dlog4j.configuration=file:/var/tmp/tools-log4j.properties -Djava.security.auth.login.config=/path/to/jaas.conf" -pd ... View more