Verify the Kafka Connect REST API is reachable; by default it listens on port 8083.
POST to http://{connect_host}:8083/connectors with Content-Type: application/json and a body containing {"name": "connector-name", "config": {"connector.class": "...", "tasks.max": "1", ...}}.
A 201 Created response returns the connector config; a 409 Conflict means a connector with that name already exists.
Check connector status via GET /connectors/{name}/status; the state field should transition to RUNNING.
Inspect individual task states at GET /connectors/{name}/status under the tasks array; a FAILED task includes a trace field with the stack trace.
Known gotchas
All config values must be strings even for numeric settings (e.g. "tasks.max": "1" not 1); non-string values cause a config validation error.
The connector class must be on the Connect worker's plugin path; if not found, the POST returns a 500 with a class not found message.
Kafka Connect distributed mode requires all workers to share the same group.id, config topic, offset topic, and status topic; mismatches cause split-brain behavior.
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