Starting Elasticsearch

The method for starting Elasticsearch varies depending on how you installed it.

If you installed Elasticsearch with a .tar.gz package, you can start Elasticsearch from the command line.

Run the following command to start Elasticsearch from the command line:

./bin/elasticsearch

When starting Elasticsearch for the first time, security features are enabled and configured by default. The following security configuration occurs automatically:

The password for the elastic user and the enrollment token for Kibana are output to your terminal. For example:

The generated password for the elastic built-in superuser is:
<password>

The enrollment token for Kibana instances, valid for the next 30 minutes:
<enrollment-token>

The hex-encoded SHA-256 fingerprint of the generated HTTPS CA DER-encoded certificate:
<fingerprint>

You can complete the following actions at any time:
Reset the password of the elastic built-in superuser with
'bin/elasticsearch-reset-password -u elastic'.

Generate an enrollment token for Kibana instances with
'bin/elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token -s kibana'.

Generate an enrollment token for Elasticsearch nodes with
'bin/elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token -s node'.

If you have password-protected the Elasticsearch keystore, you will be prompted to enter the keystore’s password. See Secure settings for more details.

By default Elasticsearch prints its logs to the console (stdout) and to the <cluster name>.log file within the logs directory. Elasticsearch logs some information while it is starting, but after it has finished initializing it will continue to run in the foreground and won’t log anything further until something happens that is worth recording. While Elasticsearch is running you can interact with it through its HTTP interface which is on port 9200 by default.

To stop Elasticsearch, press Ctrl-C.

When Elasticsearch starts for the first time, the security auto-configuration process binds the HTTP layer to 0.0.0.0, but only binds the transport layer to localhost. This intended behavior ensures that you can start a single-node cluster with security enabled by default without any additional configuration.

Before enrolling a new node, additional actions such as binding to an address other than localhost or satisfying bootstrap checks are typically necessary in production clusters. During that time, an auto-generated enrollment token could expire, which is why enrollment tokens aren’t generated automatically.

Additionally, only nodes on the same host can join the cluster without additional configuration. If you want nodes from another host to join your cluster, you need to set transport.host to a supported value (such as uncommenting the suggested value of 0.0.0.0), or an IP address that’s bound to an interface where other hosts can reach it. Refer to transport settings for more information.

To enroll new nodes in your cluster, create an enrollment token with the elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token tool on any existing node in your cluster. You can then start a new node with the --enrollment-token parameter so that it joins an existing cluster.

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

If you have password-protected the Elasticsearch keystore, you will be prompted to enter the keystore’s password. See Secure settings for more details.

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

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

pkill -F pid

If you installed Elasticsearch on Windows with a .zip package, you can start Elasticsearch from the command line. If you want Elasticsearch to start automatically at boot time without any user interaction, install Elasticsearch as a service.

Run the following command to start Elasticsearch from the command line:

.\bin\elasticsearch.bat

When starting Elasticsearch for the first time, security features are enabled and configured by default. The following security configuration occurs automatically:

The password for the elastic user and the enrollment token for Kibana are output to your terminal. For example:

The generated password for the elastic built-in superuser is:
<password>

The enrollment token for Kibana instances, valid for the next 30 minutes:
<enrollment-token>

The hex-encoded SHA-256 fingerprint of the generated HTTPS CA DER-encoded certificate:
<fingerprint>

You can complete the following actions at any time:
Reset the password of the elastic built-in superuser with
'bin\elasticsearch-reset-password -u elastic'.

Generate an enrollment token for Kibana instances with
'bin\elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token -s kibana'.

Generate an enrollment token for Elasticsearch nodes with
'bin\elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token -s node'.

If you have password-protected the Elasticsearch keystore, you will be prompted to enter the keystore’s password. See Secure settings for more details.

By default Elasticsearch prints its logs to the console (STDOUT) and to the <cluster name>.log file within the logs directory. Elasticsearch logs some information while it is starting, but after it has finished initializing it will continue to run in the foreground and won’t log anything further until something happens that is worth recording. While Elasticsearch is running you can interact with it through its HTTP interface which is on port 9200 by default.

To stop Elasticsearch, press Ctrl-C.

When Elasticsearch starts for the first time, the security auto-configuration process binds the HTTP layer to 0.0.0.0, but only binds the transport layer to localhost. This intended behavior ensures that you can start a single-node cluster with security enabled by default without any additional configuration.

Before enrolling a new node, additional actions such as binding to an address other than localhost or satisfying bootstrap checks are typically necessary in production clusters. During that time, an auto-generated enrollment token could expire, which is why enrollment tokens aren’t generated automatically.

Additionally, only nodes on the same host can join the cluster without additional configuration. If you want nodes from another host to join your cluster, you need to set transport.host to a supported value (such as uncommenting the suggested value of 0.0.0.0), or an IP address that’s bound to an interface where other hosts can reach it. Refer to transport settings for more information.

To enroll new nodes in your cluster, create an enrollment token with the elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token tool on any existing node in your cluster. You can then start a new node with the --enrollment-token parameter so that it joins an existing cluster.

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.

[2022-01-31T01:22:31,077][INFO ][o.e.n.Node               ] [instance-0000000123] starting ...
...
[2022-01-31T01:37:15,077][INFO ][o.e.n.Node               ] [instance-0000000123] stopping ...

Jan 31 01:22:30 debian systemd[1]: Starting Elasticsearch...
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Start operation timed out. Terminating.
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=15/TERM
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: Failed to start Elasticsearch.

If you installed a Docker image, you can start Elasticsearch from the command line. There are different methods depending on whether you’re using development mode or production mode. See Docker Run.

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.

[2022-01-31T01:22:31,077][INFO ][o.e.n.Node               ] [instance-0000000123] starting ...
...
[2022-01-31T01:37:15,077][INFO ][o.e.n.Node               ] [instance-0000000123] stopping ...

Jan 31 01:22:30 debian systemd[1]: Starting Elasticsearch...
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Start operation timed out. Terminating.
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=15/TERM
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
Jan 31 01:37:15 debian systemd[1]: Failed to start Elasticsearch.