title: Reading oldest available message in Kafka using KafkaConsumer instance of kafka-python kafka client
body: <p>I try to read messages in kafka consumer using the following command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --topic test --from-beginning
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here we can read old messages of about 4 days as we have set retention time in kafka server configuration file as 7 days. But while we are trying to read messages using KafkaConsumer of kaka-python client library like following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>cons = KafkaConsumer("localhost:9092", "test","smallest")
  cons.fetch_messages()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>we are getting messages of today's only with some offset. I don't have any idea how to get oldest message available in Kafka like we got in kafka consumer shell script above. Please help. </p>