TL;DR: config kicks in ONLY if your consumer group does not have a valid offset committed somewhere (2 supported offset storages now are Kafka and Zookeeper), and it also depends on what sort of consumer you use. It is a bit more complex than you described. The

## Fix
1. config kicks in ONLY if your consumer group does not have a valid offset committed somewhere (2 supported offset storages now are Kafka and Zookeeper), and it also depends on what sort of consumer you use.
   Expected: this specific failure stops.
2. If you use a high-level java consumer then imagine following scenarios: You have a consumer in a consumer group.
   Expected: this specific failure stops.
3. Next time you start this consumer it won't even use that.
   Expected: this specific failure stops.

## Details
It is a bit more complex than you described. The `auto.offset.reset` `group1` that has consumed 5 messages and died. `auto.offset.reset` You have messages in a topic (like you described) and you start a consumer in a new consumer group `group2` . There is no offset stored anywhere and this time the `auto.offset.reset` config will decide whether to start from the beginning of the topic ( `earliest` ) or from the end of the topic ( `latest` ) One more thing that affects what offset value will correspond to `earliest` and `latest` configs is log retention policy. Imagine you have a topic with retention configured to 1 hour. You produce 5 messages, and then an hour

## When to use
You hit exactly this: What determines Kafka consumer offset? in What.

## When not to use
A different error, or the same symptom in a different tool. This page only covers the failure above.

## Compatibility
What.

## Root cause
config and will continue from the place it died because it will just fetch the stored offset from the offset storage (Kafka or ZK as I mentioned).