Install Elasticsearch 5.x on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in less than 3 minutes

At Will & Skill we frequently use ElasticSearch in our project. This is a step-by-step guide on how You can install and use ElasticSearch 5.x in your project.

Look for OpenJDK in APT

$ sudo apt search openjdk

Install OpenJDK 8

$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

Add the proper GPG key for ElasticSearch

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

Make sure to install/update transport

$ sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

Save the repo definition

$ echo "deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/5.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-5.x.list

Update APT and install ElasticSearch from APT

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

Reload the daemon

$ sudo /bin/systemctl daemon-reload

Allow ElasticSearch to start on boot

$ sudo /bin/systemctl enable elasticsearch.service

Lets fire up ElasticSearch...

$ sudo systemctl start elasticsearch.service

Lets see if we have some logs

$ sudo ls -la /var/log/elasticsearch/

Have a look at the logs and make sure that ElasticSearch has properly initiated

sudo cat /var/log/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.log

If logs are looking good, You can CURL the ElasticSearch server

$ curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/?pretty'

The output should be something like this

{
  "name" : "c29HHBX",
  "cluster_name" : "elasticsearch",
  "cluster_uuid" : "LweifnvTSKeP12nRNu0DAg",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "5.6.10",
    "build_hash" : "b727a60",
    "build_date" : "2018-06-06T15:48:34.860Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "6.6.1"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

Happy coding!