Install Elasticsearch with Debian Package

The Debian package for Elasticsearch can be downloaded from our website or from our APT repository. It can be used to install Elasticsearch on any Debian-based system such as Debian and Ubuntu.

This package is free to use under the Elastic license. It contains open source and free commercial features and access to paid commercial features. Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the paid commercial features. See the Subscriptions page for information about Elastic license levels.

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 includes a bundled version of OpenJDK from the JDK maintainers (GPLv2+CE). To use your own version of Java, see the JVM version requirements

Import the Elasticsearch PGP Key

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:

wget -qO - https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | sudo apt-key add -

Installing from the APT repository

You may need to install the apt-transport-https package on Debian before proceeding:

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

Save the repository definition to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list:

echo "deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list

These instructions do not use add-apt-repository for several reasons:

1. add-apt-repository adds entries to the system /etc/apt/sources.list file rather than a clean per-repository file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d
2. add-apt-repository is not part of the default install on many distributions and requires a number of non-default dependencies.

3. Older versions of add-apt-repository always add a deb-src entry which will cause errors because we do not provide a source package. If you have added the deb-src entry, you will see an error like the following until you delete the deb-src line:

   Unable to find expected entry 'main/source/Sources' in Release file
   (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)

You can install the Elasticsearch Debian package with:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install elasticsearch

If two entries exist for the same Elasticsearch repository, you will see an error like this during apt-get update:

Duplicate sources.list entry https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt/ ...`

Examine /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elasticsearch-7.x.list for the duplicate entry or locate the duplicate entry amongst the files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

On systemd-based distributions, the installation scripts will attempt to set kernel parameters (e.g., vm.max_map_count); you can skip this by masking the systemd-sysctl.service unit.

An alternative package which contains only features that are available under the Apache 2.0 license is also available. To install it, use the following sources list:

echo "deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/oss-7.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list

Download and install the Debian package manually

The Debian package for Elasticsearch v7.9.1 can be downloaded from the website and installed as follows:

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-7.9.1-amd64.deb
wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-7.9.1-amd64.deb.sha512
shasum -a 512 -c elasticsearch-7.9.1-amd64.deb.sha512 
sudo dpkg -i elasticsearch-7.9.1-amd64.deb

Alternatively, you can download the following package, which contains only features that are available under the Apache 2.0 license: https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss-7.9.1-amd64.deb

Enable automatic creation of system indices

Some commercial features automatically create indices within Elasticsearch. By default, Elasticsearch is configured to allow automatic index creation, and no additional steps are required. However, if you have disabled automatic index creation in Elasticsearch, you must configure action.auto_create_index in elasticsearch.yml to allow the commercial features to create the following indices:

action.auto_create_index: .monitoring*,.watches,.triggered_watches,.watcher-history*,.ml*

If you are using Logstash or Beats then you will most likely require additional index names in your action.auto_create_index setting, and the exact value will depend on your local configuration. If you are unsure of the correct value for your environment, you may consider setting the value to * which will allow automatic creation of all indices.

SysV init vs systemd

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

Running Elasticsearch with SysV init

Use the update-rc.d command to configure Elasticsearch to start automatically when the system boots up:

sudo update-rc.d elasticsearch defaults 95 10

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/.

Running Elasticsearch with systemd

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.

Checking that Elasticsearch is running

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" : "7.9.1",
    "build_flavor" : "default",
    "build_type" : "tar",
    "build_hash" : "f27399d",
    "build_date" : "2016-03-30T09:51:41.449Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "8.6.2",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "1.2.3",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "1.2.3"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

Configuring Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch defaults to using /etc/elasticsearch for runtime configuration. The ownership of this directory and all files in this directory are set to root:elasticsearch on package installation and the directory has the setgid flag set so that any files and subdirectories created under /etc/elasticsearch are created with this ownership as well (e.g., if a keystore is created using the keystore tool). It is expected that this be maintained so that the Elasticsearch process can read the files under this directory via the group 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 Debian package also has a system configuration file (/etc/default/elasticsearch), which allows you to set the following parameters:

Distributions that use systemd require that system resource limits be configured via systemd rather than via the /etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch file. See Systemd configuration for more information.

Directory layout of Debian package

The Debian package places config files, logs, and the data directory in the appropriate locations for a Debian-based system:

Next steps

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

• Learn how to configure Elasticsearch.
• Configure important Elasticsearch settings.
• Configure important system settings.