These rpms were built to have an easy way to install the elasticsearch
binary distribution in a systemic way.

The only reason these packages are not submitted upstream is the
requirements for packaging Java are fairly complicated and require building
everything from source and using any other previously packaged libraries.
There were some glaring omissions from the package tree in order to use this
one.

To install on a fedora or rhel system:

• Download the rpm that matches your system ( fc14 for Fedora 14, epel-5 for
  CentOS 5 etc.. )
• install with yum
  

  yum install -nogpgcheck ${rpm} 

• Change any configs you need to
• Start up the node
  

  /etc/init.d/elasticsearch start

• If you want it to start after restart
  

  chkconfig elasticsearch on

• Watch the log files
  

  tail -F /var/log/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.log

• Search!