Homebrew installed ElasticSearch failing to start

Question

I have installed the latest version of ElasticSearch ( 7.3 ) via HomeBrew, using following commands

```sh
$ brew tap elastic/tap
$ brew install elastic/tap/elasticsearch-full
==> Installing elasticsearch-full from elastic/tap
==> Downloading https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-7.3.0-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz?tap=elastic/homebrew-tap
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Caveats
Data:    /usr/local/var/lib/elasticsearch/elasticsearch_experimental/
Logs:    /usr/local/var/log/elasticsearch/elasticsearch_experimental.log
Plugins: /usr/local/var/elasticsearch/plugins/
Config:  /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch/

To have launchd start elastic/tap/elasticsearch-full now and restart at login:
  brew services start elastic/tap/elasticsearch-full
Or, if you don't want/need a background service you can just run:
  elasticsearch
==> Summary
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/elasticsearch-full/7.3.0: 760 files, 437.1MB, built in 1 minute 8 seconds
$ brew services list
Name               Status  User  Plist
elasticsearch-full stopped

```
After installing I ran command `elasticsearch` which is giving the following error

```sh
$ elasticsearch
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: starting java failed with [1]
output:
[0.002s][error][logging] Error opening log file 'logs/gc.log': No such file or directory
[0.002s][error][logging] Initialization of output 'file=logs/gc.log' using options 'filecount=32,filesize=64m' failed.
error:
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM warning: Option UseConcMarkSweepGC was deprecated in version 9.0 and will likely be removed in a future release.
Invalid -Xlog option '-Xlog:gc*,gc+age=trace,safepoint:file=logs/gc.log:utctime,pid,tags:filecount=32,filesize=64m', see error log for details.
Error: Could not create the Java Virtual Machine.
Error: A fatal exception has occurred. Program will exit.
	at org.elasticsearch.tools.launchers.JvmErgonomics.flagsFinal(JvmErgonomics.java:111)
	at org.elasticsearch.tools.launchers.JvmErgonomics.finalJvmOptions(JvmErgonomics.java:79)
	at org.elasticsearch.tools.launchers.JvmErgonomics.choose(JvmErgonomics.java:57)
	at org.elasticsearch.tools.launchers.JvmOptionsParser.main(JvmOptionsParser.java:89)
```
and the service is not starting.

Karthik Divi · Accepted Answer

I have fixed this by changing the relative logs/gc.log path to an absolute path. Follow the below steps to solve the issue

1. Open `jvm.options` file which is located at `/usr/local/etc/elasticsearch/jvm.options`

2. Change the relative path to an absolute path

from the following 
 ```
 # JDK 9+ GC logging
 9-:-Xlog:gc*,gc+age=trace,safepoint:file=logs/gc.log:utctime,pid,tags:filecount=32,filesize=64m
 ```

to

```
 # JDK 9+ GC logging
 9-:-Xlog:gc*,gc+age=trace,safepoint:file=/usr/local/var/log/elasticsearch/gc.log:utctime,pid,tags:filecount=32,filesize=64m
 ```

3. Restart ElasticSearch by running `$ brew services restart elasticsearch-full`

Homebrew installed ElasticSearch failing to start

1 Answer