In order to run elasticsearch as a service on your operating system, the provided packages try to make it as easy as possible for you to start and stop elasticsearch during reboot and upgrades.
Currently our build automatically creates a debian package and an RPM package, which is available on the download page. The package itself does not have any dependencies, but you have to make sure that you installed a JDK.
Each package features a configuration file, which allows you to set the following parameters
`ES_USER`:: The user to run as, defaults to `elasticsearch`
`ES_GROUP`:: The group to run as, defaults to `elasticsearch`
`ES_HEAP_SIZE`:: The heap size to start with
`ES_HEAP_NEWSIZE`:: The size of the new generation heap
`ES_DIRECT_SIZE`:: The maximum size of the direct memory
`MAX_OPEN_FILES`:: Maximum number of open files, defaults to `65535`
`MAX_LOCKED_MEMORY`:: Maximum locked memory size. Set to "unlimited" if you use the bootstrap.mlockall option in elasticsearch.yml. You must also set ES_HEAP_SIZE.
`LOG_DIR`:: Log directory, defaults to `/var/log/elasticsearch`
`DATA_DIR`:: Data directory, defaults to `/var/lib/elasticsearch`
`WORK_DIR`:: Work directory, defaults to `/tmp/elasticsearch`
`CONF_DIR`:: Configuration file directory (which needs to include `elasticsearch.yml` and `logging.yml` files), defaults to `/etc/elasticsearch`
`CONF_FILE`:: Path to configuration file, defaults to `/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml`
`ES_JAVA_OPTS`:: Any additional java options you may want to apply
`RESTART_ON_UPGRADE`:: Configure restart on package upgrade, defaults to `false`. This means you will have to restart your elasticsearch instance after installing a package manually. The reason for this is to ensure, that upgrades in a cluster do not result in a continouos shard reallocation resulting in high network traffic and reducing the response times of your cluster.
The debian package ships with everything you need as it uses standard debian tools like update `update-rc.d` to define the runlevels it runs on. The init script is placed at `/etc/init.d/elasticsearch` is you would expect it. The configuration file is placed at `/etc/default/elasticsearch`.
RedHat based distributions are using `chkconfig` to enable and disable services. The init script is at `/etc/init.d/elasticsearch`, where as the configuration file is placed at `/etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch`.
SuSe does not use the `chkconfig` tool to register services, but rather `systemd` and its command `/bin/systemctl` to start and stop services. The configuration file is also placed at `/etc/sysconfig/elasticsearch`.
