Install Elasticsearch with RPM

We sign all of our packages with the Elasticsearch Signing Key (PGP key D88E42B4, available from https://pgp.mit.edu) with fingerprint:

4609 5ACC 8548 582C 1A26 99A9 D27D 666C D88E 42B4

Download and install the public signing key:

rpm --import https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch

Create a file called elasticsearch.repo in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory for RedHat based distributions, or in the /etc/zypp/repos.d/ directory for OpenSuSE based distributions, containing:

[elasticsearch]
name=Elasticsearch repository for 7.x packages
baseurl=https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/yum
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
enabled=0
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

And your repository is ready for use. You can now install Elasticsearch with one of the following commands:

sudo yum install --enablerepo=elasticsearch elasticsearch 
sudo dnf install --enablerepo=elasticsearch elasticsearch 
sudo zypper modifyrepo --enable elasticsearch && \
  sudo zypper install elasticsearch; \
  sudo zypper modifyrepo --disable elasticsearch 

The RPM for Elasticsearch v7.12.1 can be downloaded from the website and installed as follows:

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-7.12.1-x86_64.rpm
wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-7.12.1-x86_64.rpm.sha512
shasum -a 512 -c elasticsearch-7.12.1-x86_64.rpm.sha512 
sudo rpm --install elasticsearch-7.12.1-x86_64.rpm

Elasticsearch is not started automatically after installation. How to start and stop Elasticsearch depends on whether your system uses SysV init or systemd (used by newer distributions). You can tell which is being used by running this command:

ps -p 1

Use the chkconfig command to configure Elasticsearch to start automatically when the system boots up:

sudo chkconfig --add elasticsearch

Elasticsearch can be started and stopped using the service command:

sudo -i service elasticsearch start
sudo -i service elasticsearch stop

If Elasticsearch fails to start for any reason, it will print the reason for failure to STDOUT. Log files can be found in /var/log/elasticsearch/.

To configure Elasticsearch to start automatically when the system boots up, run the following commands:

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

Elasticsearch can be started and stopped as follows:

sudo systemctl start elasticsearch.service
sudo systemctl stop elasticsearch.service

These commands provide no feedback as to whether Elasticsearch was started successfully or not. Instead, this information will be written in the log files located in /var/log/elasticsearch/.

If you have password-protected your Elasticsearch keystore, you will need to provide systemd with the keystore password using a local file and systemd environment variables. This local file should be protected while it exists and may be safely deleted once Elasticsearch is up and running.

echo "keystore_password" > /path/to/my_pwd_file.tmp
chmod 600 /path/to/my_pwd_file.tmp
sudo systemctl set-environment ES_KEYSTORE_PASSPHRASE_FILE=/path/to/my_pwd_file.tmp
sudo systemctl start elasticsearch.service

By default the Elasticsearch service doesn’t log information in the systemd journal. To enable journalctl logging, the --quiet option must be removed from the ExecStart command line in the elasticsearch.service file.

When systemd logging is enabled, the logging information are available using the journalctl commands:

To tail the journal:

sudo journalctl -f

To list journal entries for the elasticsearch service:

sudo journalctl --unit elasticsearch

To list journal entries for the elasticsearch service starting from a given time:

sudo journalctl --unit elasticsearch --since  "2016-10-30 18:17:16"

Check man journalctl or https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/journalctl.html for more command line options.

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" : "7.12.1",
    "build_flavor" : "default",
    "build_type" : "tar",
    "build_hash" : "f27399d",
    "build_date" : "2016-03-30T09:51:41.449Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "8.8.0",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "1.2.3",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "1.2.3"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

The /etc/elasticsearch directory contains the default runtime configuration for Elasticsearch. The ownership of this directory and all contained files are set to root:elasticsearch on package installations.

The setgid flag applies group permissions on the /etc/elasticsearch directory to ensure that Elasticsearch can read any contained files and subdirectories. All files and subdirectories inherit the root:elasticsearch ownership. Running commands from this directory or any subdirectories, such as the elasticsearch-keystore tool, requires root:elasticsearch permissions.

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

The RPM also has a system configuration file (/etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch), which allows you to set the following parameters:

The RPM places config files, logs, and the data directory in the appropriate locations for an RPM-based system: