Starting Elasticsearch

Starting Elasticsearch

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

Archive packages (.tar.gz)

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

Run 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:

• Authentication and authorization are enabled, and a password is generated for the elastic built-in superuser.
• Certificates and keys for TLS are generated for the transport and HTTP layer, and TLS is enabled and configured with these keys and certificates.
• An enrollment token is generated for Kibana, which is valid for 30 minutes.

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

We recommend storing the elastic password as an environment variable in your shell. Example:

export ELASTIC_PASSWORD="your_password"

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.

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.

Enroll nodes in an existing cluster

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.

1. In a separate terminal from where Elasticsearch is running, navigate to the directory where you installed Elasticsearch and run the elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token tool to generate an enrollment token for your new nodes.

   bin/elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token -s node

   Copy the enrollment token, which you’ll use to enroll new nodes with your Elasticsearch cluster.

2. From the installation directory of your new node, start Elasticsearch and pass the enrollment token with the --enrollment-token parameter.

   bin/elasticsearch --enrollment-token <enrollment-token>

   Elasticsearch automatically generates certificates and keys in the following directory:

   config/certs

3. Repeat the previous step for any new nodes that you want to enroll.

Run as a daemon

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

The Elasticsearch .tar.gz package does not include the systemd module. To manage Elasticsearch as a service, use the Debian or RPM package instead.

Archive packages (.zip)

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 Elasticsearch from the command line

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:

• Authentication and authorization are enabled, and a password is generated for the elastic built-in superuser.
• Certificates and keys for TLS are generated for the transport and HTTP layer, and TLS is enabled and configured with these keys and certificates.
• An enrollment token is generated for Kibana, which is valid for 30 minutes.

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

We recommend storing the elastic password as an environment variable in your shell. Example:

$ELASTIC_PASSWORD = "your_password"

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.

Enroll nodes in an existing cluster

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.

1. In a separate terminal from where Elasticsearch is running, navigate to the directory where you installed Elasticsearch and run the elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token tool to generate an enrollment token for your new nodes.

   bin\elasticsearch-create-enrollment-token -s node

   Copy the enrollment token, which you’ll use to enroll new nodes with your Elasticsearch cluster.

2. From the installation directory of your new node, start Elasticsearch and pass the enrollment token with the --enrollment-token parameter.

   bin\elasticsearch --enrollment-token <enrollment-token>

   Elasticsearch automatically generates certificates and keys in the following directory:

   config\certs

3. Repeat the previous step for any new nodes that you want to enroll.

Debian packages

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.

Startup timeouts with older systemd versions

By default Elasticsearch sets the TimeoutStartSec parameter to systemd to 900s. If you are running at least version 238 of systemd then Elasticsearch can automatically extend the startup timeout, and will do so repeatedly until startup is complete even if it takes longer than 900s.

Versions of systemd prior to 238 do not support the timeout extension mechanism and will terminate the Elasticsearch process if it has not fully started up within the configured timeout. If this happens, Elasticsearch will report in its logs that it was shut down normally a short time after it started:

[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 ...

However the systemd logs will report that the startup timed out:

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.

To avoid this, upgrade your systemd to at least version 238. You can also temporarily work around the problem by extending the TimeoutStartSec parameter.

Docker images

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 Run Elasticsearch in Docker.

RPM packages

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.

Startup timeouts with older systemd versions

By default Elasticsearch sets the TimeoutStartSec parameter to systemd to 900s. If you are running at least version 238 of systemd then Elasticsearch can automatically extend the startup timeout, and will do so repeatedly until startup is complete even if it takes longer than 900s.

Versions of systemd prior to 238 do not support the timeout extension mechanism and will terminate the Elasticsearch process if it has not fully started up within the configured timeout. If this happens, Elasticsearch will report in its logs that it was shut down normally a short time after it started:

[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 ...

However the systemd logs will report that the startup timed out:

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.

To avoid this, upgrade your systemd to at least version 238. You can also temporarily work around the problem by extending the TimeoutStartSec parameter.