Version: SG FLX
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Demo Installer

Search Guard comes with a demo installation shell script which helps you to quickly get Search Guard up and running on a test instance of Elasticsearch. The most easy way is to set it up just on your local computer.

Running the Demo Installer

The following paragraphs will guide you through the installation process.

  • Download the demo installer script for the setup you want to test:
  • If you want, feel invited to review the script. The single steps are also explained as comments in the file.
  • Open a shell, create a working directory, cd into the directory. Possibly, you have to mark the script as executable by doing chmod u+x search-guard-flx-elasticsearch-plugin-1.0.0-es-7.16.3-demo-installer.sh. Then, execute the script:
$ ./search-guard-flx-elasticsearch-plugin-1.0.0-es-7.16.3-demo-installer.sh
  • The script will download the Search Guard plugins and the sgctl tool. Additionally, it will download the matching version of Elasticsearch, which will be automatically extracted to the working directory. The same will be done for Kibana.
  • Afterwards, the script will install the Search Guard plugins and apply the basic configuration necessary for Search Guard and sgctl.
  • Now, the script is done. If you want to see what the script has downloaded installed, list the directory contents. You should see the downloaded software archives, the sgctl.sh tool, keys for authenticating as administrator, and the elasticsearch directory with a ready-to-start setup.
$ ls -lh
total 677M
-rw-rw-r--  1 sg sg 1,7K Sep 15 12:35 admin-key.pem
-rw-rw-r--  1 sg sg 1,6K Sep 15 12:35 admin.pem
drwxrwxr-x 10 sg sg 4,0K Sep 15 12:35 elasticsearch
-rw-rw-r--  1 sg sg 329M Sep 15 12:35 elasticsearch-7.16.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
drwxrwxr-x 10 sg sg 4,0K Sep 15 12:35 kibana
-rw-rw-r--  1 sg sg 273M Sep 15 12:35 kibana-7.16.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x  2 sg sg 4,0K Sep 15 12:35 my-sg-config
-rw-rw-r--  1 sg sg  14M Sep 15 12:35 search-guard-flx-kibana-plugin-1.0.0-es-7.16.3.zip
-rw-rw-r--  1 sg sg  49M Sep 15 12:35 search-guard-elasticsearch-plugin-1.0.0-es-7.16.3.zip
-rwxrwxr-x  1 sg sg  22K Sep 15 12:35 search-guard-elasticsearch-plugin-1.0.0-es-7.16.3-demo-installer.sh
-rwxrw-r--  1 sg sg  14M Sep 15 12:35 sgctl.sh
  • You can start the cluster by running
$ elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch
  • If you want, you can start Kibana in a parallel shell by executing:
$ kibana/bin/kibana

Note: While Kibana is started, it will begin optimizing and caching browser bundles. This process may take a few minutes.

Testing the Elasticsearch installation

After having started the cluster, you can make the first steps with Search Guard.

  • Open https://localhost:9200/_searchguard/authinfo.
  • Accept the self-signed demo TLS certificate.
  • In the HTTP Basic Authentication dialogue, use admin as username and admin as password.
  • This will print out information about the user admin in JSON format.

If you also have started Kibana, you can test it as well:

  • Open http://localhost:5601/.
  • You should be redirected to the Kibana login page
  • On the login dialogue, use admin as username and admin as password.

If everything is set up correctly, you should see three new navigation entries on the left pane:

Applying configuration changes

The Search Guard configuration, like users, roles and permissions, is stored in a dedicated index in Elasticsearch itself, the so-called Search Guard Index.

Changes to the Search Guard configuration must be applied to this index by either

  • Using the Search Guard Configuration GUI (Enterprise feature)
  • Using the sgctl command line tool

For using the Search Guard Configuration GUI you need to install the Search Guard Kibana Plugin, as described below.

If you want to use the sgctl tool:

  • Apply your changes to the demo configuration files located in my-sg-config
  • Execute ./sgctl.sh update-config my-sg-config

This will read the contents of the configuration files in my-sg-config and upload the contents to the Search Guard index.

If you also have started Kibana, you can also edit the configuration via the Search Guard Config GUI. Click on the hamburger icon and then on the “Search Guard” menu item to get directed to the Search Guard Config GUI.

Review the generated configuration

If you want to know how things work under the hood, have a look at the automatically generated configuration in the files

  • elaticsearch/config/elaticsearch.yml
  • kibana/config/kibana.yml

You will find lots of additional information on the options in comments in the files. Look for sections starting like this:

# -----------------------------------------------------------
# Search Guard Demo Configuration
# -----------------------------------------------------------

# -----
# The root certificate that is used to check the authenticity
# of all other certificates presented to Search Guard
#
searchguard.ssl.transport.pemtrustedcas_filepath: root-ca.pem
searchguard.ssl.http.pemtrustedcas_filepath: root-ca.pem
...

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