Installing Elasticsearch on OSX Mavericks

Question

I'm trying to install Elasticsearch 1.1.0 on OSX Mavericks but i got the following errors when i'm trying to start:

:> ./elasticsearch Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.elasticsearch.Version at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.buildErrorMessage(Bootstrap.java:252) at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:236) at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:32) 

Also when i'm executing the same command with -v arg, i got this error:

:> ./elasticsearch -v Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoSuchFieldError: LUCENE_36 at org.elasticsearch.Version.<clinit>(Version.java:42) 

Here's my environment:

Java version

>: java -version java version "1.8.0" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-b132) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.0-b70, mixed mode) 

Instalation path (downloaded .tar.gz archive from elasticsearch download page and extracted here):

/usr/local/elasticsearch-1.1.0 

ENV vars:

JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0.jdk/Contents/Home  CLASSPATH=/usr/local/elasticsearch-1.1.0/lib/*.jar:/usr/local/elasticsearch-1.1.0/lib/sigar/*.jar 

UPDATE

i finally make it working, unfortunally not sure how because i tried a lot of changes :). But here's a list of changes i made that can help:

• i removed jdk and jre and reinstalled on a clean env. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/install/mac_jdk.html#A1096855

• i deleted all the cache dirs.I suppose this can be the 'cause' for that it's working now

~/Library/Caches

/Library/Caches

• i removed CLASSPATH env var.

• ES_PATH and ES_HOME env vars are not set either, but i think this is not so important.

Note: now it's working also if i'm installing with brew.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should really consider using brew. It's a great tool that will take care of dependencies, version control and much more.

To install Elasticsearch using brew, simply:

brew update brew install elasticsearch 

Boom! Done.

After that follow Elasticsearch instructions :

1. To have launchd start Elasticsearch at login:

   ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/elasticsearch/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents 

2. Then to load Elasticsearch now:

   launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.elasticsearch.plist 

   Or, if you don't want/need launchctl, you can just run:

   elasticsearch 

Answer 2

As there are not very good instructions for actually "installing" it onto a Mac:

Short Version:

1. Install Java (prefer latest supported release)
2. Set JAVA_HOME environment variable.
3. Download Elasticsearch version (tar or zip).
4. Extract Elasticsearch from the downloaded file.
5. Run bin/elasticsearch from the extracted directory.

Long version:

1. Download Java

   • Only need the JRE if you will not be writing code on the same machine.

   • I assume that you are getting the latest JDK, which is currently JDK 8 (as you appear to have, and I have installed working on my machine).

2. Download and extract Elasticsearch and extract it into some directory.

   1. For example: mkdir -p ~/dev/elasticsearch

   2. Optionally move the downloaded file to there:

      mv Downloads/elasticsearch* ~/dev/elasticsearch

   3. Extract the downloaded file:

      cd ~/dev/elasticsearch (if you moved it in step 2)

      • If it's the zip, then unzip elasticsearch-1.1.0.zip (or if you don't want to cd into the directory, then just run unzip elasticsearch-1.1.0.zip -d ~/dev/elasticsearch)

      • If it's the tar, then tar -xvf elasticsearch-1.1.0.tar.gz (or if you don't want to cd into the directory, then just run tar -xvf elasticsearch-1.1.0.tar.gz -C ~/dev/elasticsearch)

   4. Cleanup (if you want) by removing the downloaded file:

      rm elasticsearch-1.1.0.*

3. Open your .bash_profile file for your bash profile settings:

   vi ~/.bash_profile

4. In the file, export your environment variable(s)

   export ES_HOME=~/dev/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-1.1.0

   export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0.jdk/Contents/Home

   export PATH=$ES_HOME/bin:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

   • Close and re-open your Terminal OR

   • Run source ~/.bash_profile to update the environment variables

5. Run Elasticsearch:

   elasticsearch

   • The more traditional way to run it is to do pretty much all of the above, but not add $ES_HOME/bin to the PATH. Then, just go to ES_PATH (cd $ES_PATH, then bin/elasticsearch) or run $ES_PATH/bin/elasticsearch.

Note: Do not setup your CLASSPATH without a very good reason. The scripts will do that for you.