Create passwords for built-in users

There are built-in users that you can use for specific administrative purposes: apm_system, beats_system, elastic, kibana_system, logstash_system, and remote_monitoring_user.

Before you can use them, you must set their passwords:

1. Restart Elasticsearch. For example, if you installed Elasticsearch with a .tar.gz package, run the following command from the Elasticsearch directory:

   ./bin/elasticsearch

   See Starting Elasticsearch.

2. Set the built-in users’ passwords.

   Run the following command from the Elasticsearch directory:

   ./bin/elasticsearch-setup-passwords interactive

You need these built-in users in subsequent steps, so choose passwords that you can remember!

This tutorial does not use the built-in apm_system, logstash_system, beats_system, and remote_monitoring_user users, which are typically associated with monitoring. For more information, see Configuring credentials for Logstash monitoring and Monitoring Metricbeat.