WARNING: Version 5.6 of Elasticsearch has passed its EOL date.

This documentation is no longer being maintained and may be removed. If you are running this version, we strongly advise you to upgrade. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Reference [5.6] ›Set up Elasticsearch ›Installing Elasticsearch

Install Elasticsearch with .zip or .tar.gz

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Install Elasticsearch with .zip or .tar.gz

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Elasticsearch is provided as a .zip and as a .tar.gz package. These packages can be used to install Elasticsearch on any system and are the easiest package format to use when trying out Elasticsearch.

The latest stable version of Elasticsearch can be found on the Download Elasticsearch page. Other versions can be found on the Past Releases page.

Elasticsearch requires Java 8. Use the official Oracle distribution or an open-source distribution such as OpenJDK.

Download and install the .zip package

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The .zip archive for Elasticsearch v5.6.16 can be downloaded and installed as follows:

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-5.6.16.zip
sha1sum elasticsearch-5.6.16.zip 
unzip elasticsearch-5.6.16.zip
cd elasticsearch-5.6.16/

Compare the SHA produced by sha1sum or shasum with the published SHA.

This directory is known as $ES_HOME.

Download and install the .tar.gz package

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The .tar.gz archive for Elasticsearch v5.6.16 can be downloaded and installed as follows:

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-5.6.16.tar.gz
sha1sum elasticsearch-5.6.16.tar.gz 
tar -xzf elasticsearch-5.6.16.tar.gz
cd elasticsearch-5.6.16/

Compare the SHA produced by sha1sum or shasum with the published SHA.

This directory is known as $ES_HOME.

Running Elasticsearch from the command line

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Elasticsearch can be started from the command line as follows:

./bin/elasticsearch

By default, Elasticsearch runs in the foreground, prints its logs to the standard output (stdout), and can be stopped by pressing Ctrl-C.

All scripts packaged with Elasticsearch require a version of Bash that supports arrays and assume that Bash is available at /bin/bash. As such, Bash should be available at this path either directly or via a symbolic link.

Checking that Elasticsearch is running

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You can test that your Elasticsearch node is running by sending an HTTP request to port 9200 on localhost:

GET /

which should give you a response something like this:

{
  "name" : "Cp8oag6",
  "cluster_name" : "elasticsearch",
  "cluster_uuid" : "AT69_T_DTp-1qgIJlatQqA",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "5.6.16",
    "build_hash" : "f27399d",
    "build_date" : "2016-03-30T09:51:41.449Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "6.6.1"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

Log printing to stdout can be disabled using the -q or --quiet option on the command line.

Running as a daemon

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To run Elasticsearch as a daemon, specify -d on the command line, and record the process ID in a file using the -p option:

./bin/elasticsearch -d -p pid

Log messages can be found in the $ES_HOME/logs/ directory.

To shut down Elasticsearch, kill the process ID recorded in the pid file:

kill `cat pid`

The startup scripts provided in the RPM and Debian packages take care of starting and stopping the Elasticsearch process for you.

Configuring Elasticsearch on the command line

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Elasticsearch loads its configuration from the $ES_HOME/config/elasticsearch.yml file by default. The format of this config file is explained in Configuring Elasticsearch.

Any settings that can be specified in the config file can also be specified on the command line, using the -E syntax as follows:

./bin/elasticsearch -d -Ecluster.name=my_cluster -Enode.name=node_1

Typically, any cluster-wide settings (like cluster.name) should be added to the elasticsearch.yml config file, while any node-specific settings such as node.name could be specified on the command line.

Directory layout of .zip and .tar.gz archives

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The .zip and .tar.gz packages are entirely self-contained. All files and directories are, by default, contained within $ES_HOME — the directory created when unpacking the archive.

This is very convenient because you don’t have to create any directories to start using Elasticsearch, and uninstalling Elasticsearch is as easy as removing the $ES_HOME directory. However, it is advisable to change the default locations of the config directory, the data directory, and the logs directory so that you do not delete important data later on.

Type Description Default Location Setting

home

Elasticsearch home directory or $ES_HOME

Directory created by unpacking the archive

bin

Binary scripts including elasticsearch to start a node and elasticsearch-plugin to install plugins

$ES_HOME/bin

conf

Configuration files including elasticsearch.yml

$ES_HOME/config

path.conf

data

The location of the data files of each index / shard allocated on the node. Can hold multiple locations.

$ES_HOME/data

path.data

logs

Log files location.

$ES_HOME/logs

path.logs

plugins

Plugin files location. Each plugin will be contained in a subdirectory.

$ES_HOME/plugins

repo

Shared file system repository locations. Can hold multiple locations. A file system repository can be placed in to any subdirectory of any directory specified here.

Not configured

path.repo

script

Location of script files.

$ES_HOME/scripts

path.scripts

Next steps

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You now have a test Elasticsearch environment set up. Before you start serious development or go into production with Elasticsearch, you will need to do some additional setup:

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