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Running as a Service on Linux

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Running as a Service on Linux

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In order to run elasticsearch as a service on your operating system, the provided packages try to make it as easy as possible for you to start and stop elasticsearch during reboot and upgrades.

Linux

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Currently our build automatically creates a debian package and an RPM package, which is available on the download page. The package itself does not have any dependencies, but you have to make sure that you installed a JDK.

Each package features a configuration file, which allows you to set the following parameters

`ES_USER`	The user to run as, defaults to `elasticsearch`
`ES_GROUP`	The group to run as, defaults to `elasticsearch`
`ES_HEAP_SIZE`	The heap size to start with
`ES_HEAP_NEWSIZE`	The size of the new generation heap
`ES_DIRECT_SIZE`	The maximum size of the direct memory
`MAX_OPEN_FILES`	Maximum number of open files, defaults to `65535`
`MAX_LOCKED_MEMORY`	Maximum locked memory size. Set to "unlimited" if you use the bootstrap.mlockall option in elasticsearch.yml. You must also set ES_HEAP_SIZE.
`MAX_MAP_COUNT`	Maximum number of memory map areas a process may have. If you use `mmapfs` as index store type, make sure this is set to a high value. For more information, check the linux kernel documentation about `max_map_count`. This is set via `sysctl` before starting elasticsearch. Defaults to `65535`
`LOG_DIR`	Log directory, defaults to `/var/log/elasticsearch`
`DATA_DIR`	Data directory, defaults to `/var/lib/elasticsearch`
`WORK_DIR`	Work directory, defaults to `/tmp/elasticsearch`
`CONF_DIR`	Configuration file directory (which needs to include `elasticsearch.yml` and `logging.yml` files), defaults to `/etc/elasticsearch`
`CONF_FILE`	Path to configuration file, defaults to `/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml`
`ES_JAVA_OPTS`	Any additional java options you may want to apply. This may be useful, if you need to set the `node.name` property, but do not want to change the `elasticsearch.yml` configuration file, because it is distributed via a provisioning system like puppet or chef. Example: `ES_JAVA_OPTS="-Des.node.name=search-01"`
`RESTART_ON_UPGRADE`	Configure restart on package upgrade, defaults to `false`. This means you will have to restart your elasticsearch instance after installing a package manually. The reason for this is to ensure, that upgrades in a cluster do not result in a continuous shard reallocation resulting in high network traffic and reducing the response times of your cluster.

Debian/Ubuntu

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The debian package ships with everything you need as it uses standard debian tools like update update-rc.d to define the runlevels it runs on. The init script is placed at /etc/init.d/elasticsearch as you would expect it. The configuration file is placed at /etc/default/elasticsearch.

The debian package does not start up the service by default. The reason for this is to prevent the instance to accidentally join a cluster, without being configured appropriately. After installing using dpkg -i you can use the following commands to ensure, that elasticsearch starts when the system is booted and then start up elasticsearch:

sudo update-rc.d elasticsearch defaults 95 10
sudo /etc/init.d/elasticsearch start

Installing the oracle JDK

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The usual recommendation is to run the Oracle JDK with elasticsearch. However Ubuntu and Debian only ship the OpenJDK due to license issues. You can easily install the oracle installer package though. In case you are missing the add-apt-repository command under Debian GNU/Linux, make sure have at least Debian Wheezy and the package python-software-properties installed

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer
java -version

The last command should verify a successful installation of the Oracle JDK. If you want to install java8, you can call apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

RPM based distributions

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Using chkconfig

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Some RPM based distributions are using chkconfig to enable and disable services. The init script is located at /etc/init.d/elasticsearch, where as the configuration file is placed at /etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch. Like the debian package the RPM package is not started by default after installation, you have to do this manually by entering the following commands

sudo /sbin/chkconfig --add elasticsearch
sudo service elasticsearch start

Using systemd

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Distributions like SUSE do not use the chkconfig tool to register services, but rather systemd and its command /bin/systemctl to start and stop services (at least in newer versions, otherwise use the chkconfig commands above). The configuration file is also placed at /etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch. After installing the RPM, you have to change the systemd configuration and then start up elasticsearch

sudo /bin/systemctl daemon-reload
sudo /bin/systemctl enable elasticsearch.service
sudo /bin/systemctl start elasticsearch.service

Also note that changing the MAX_MAP_COUNT setting in /etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch does not have any effect, you will have to change it in /usr/lib/sysctl.d/elasticsearch.conf in order to have it applied at startup.

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