There are two ways of running and installing elasticsearch-head

If you’ve installed the .deb package, then the plugin exectuable will be available at /usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/plugin.

• sudo elasticsearch/bin/plugin -install mobz/elasticsearch-head
• open http://localhost:9200/_plugin/head/

This will automatically download the latest version of elasticsearch-head from github and run it as a plugin within the elasticsearch cluster. In this mode;

• elasticsearch provides a simple webserver to run head
• elasticsearch-head automatically connects to the node that is running it
• is available at http://localhost:9200/_plugin/head/ (or whatever the address of your cluster is)
• Will not work with elasticsearch prior to version 0.17

• git clone git://github.com/mobz/elasticsearch-head.git
• cd elasticsearch-head
• open index.html

This will manually download the latest version of elasticsearch-head from github and run it standalone. In this mode;

• elasticsearch-head is running from the file system and some features will not work
• may have trouble connecting to the node if the node is protected by some security measures
• works with any version of elasticsearch

elastisearch-head is a standalone webapp written in good-ol’ html5. This means, you can put it up on any webserver, run it directly from the filesystem, use it on an ipad, or put it on a floppy disk and carry it with you.