diff --git a/bin/plugin b/bin/plugin
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..42727f9fc15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/bin/plugin
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+CDPATH=""
+SCRIPT="$0"
+
+# SCRIPT may be an arbitrarily deep series of symlinks. Loop until we have the concrete path.
+while [ -h "$SCRIPT" ] ; do
+  ls=`ls -ld "$SCRIPT"`
+  # Drop everything prior to ->
+  link=`expr "$ls" : '.*-> \(.*\)$'`
+  if expr "$link" : '/.*' > /dev/null; then
+    SCRIPT="$link"
+  else
+    SCRIPT=`dirname "$SCRIPT"`/"$link"
+  fi
+done
+
+# determine elasticsearch home
+ES_HOME=`dirname "$SCRIPT"`/..
+
+# make ELASTICSEARCH_HOME absolute
+ES_HOME=`cd "$ES_HOME"; pwd`
+
+
+if [ -x "$JAVA_HOME/bin/java" ]; then
+    JAVA=$JAVA_HOME/bin/java
+else
+    JAVA=`which java`
+fi
+
+# this is a poor mans getopt replacement
+# real getopt cannot be used because we need to hand options over to the PluginManager
+while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
+  case $1 in
+    -D*=*)
+      properties="$properties $1"
+      ;;
+    -D*)
+      var=$1
+      shift
+      properties="$properties $var=$1"
+      ;;
+    *)
+      args="$args $1"
+  esac
+  shift
+done
+
+exec $JAVA $JAVA_OPTS -Xmx64m -Xms16m -Delasticsearch -Des.path.home="$ES_HOME" $properties -cp "$ES_HOME/lib/*" org.elasticsearch.plugins.PluginManager $args
+