title: Running Elastic without the Trial License
body: <p><strong>Background:</strong>
  I'm trying to use the Elastic stack <em>(Elastic, Logstash &amp; Kibana)</em>, but I have no money to pay. I don't mind using the parts that are closed source, as long as they are free. In this regard, I'm trying to understand how Elastic Licensing works.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://www.elastic.co/products/x-pack/open" rel="noreferrer">We Opened X-Pack</a> seems to suggest that after  Elastic 6.3 the X-Pack Code is included <em>(though with a different license)</em>. I also understand that some parts of X-Pack are free, but other's are not. This is all a bit confusing. </p>
  
  <p><strong>Objective:</strong>  I would like to run Elastic stack with all of the free stuff, and none of the paid stuff. </p>
  
  <p><strong>What I have done so far:</strong> 
  I'm on Linux but I have chosen not to use the distribution package repositories i.e. I would like to use the downloads provided by Elastic Co. For Elastic and Kibana, I have downloaded and extracted the tar.gz version 6.5.4 GA Release from <a href="https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch" rel="noreferrer">https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch</a> and <a href="https://www.elastic.co/downloads/kibana" rel="noreferrer">https://www.elastic.co/downloads/kibana</a> For most part, I did not set any options, so I assume my setup used the defaults. Both Elastic and Kibana started up, without any issues. I'm running these on the commandline for now. </p>
  
  <p>From the logs, I noticed that the install had been granted a trial version license for 14 days or something like that. Since I did not want to use the license, I used the <a href="https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/delete-license.html#delete-license" rel="noreferrer">Delete license API</a> i.e. I ran </p>
  
  <pre><code>curl -X DELETE "localhost:9200/_xpack/license"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This worked in a sense i.e. I got the <strong>{"acknowledged": true}</strong> response. I thought this would get rid of the xpack stuff that was not free, but unfortunately, it didn't. I still saw some of the x-pack stuff in the startup. </p>
  
  <p>I then tried to do what is mentioned in <a href="https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/x-pack/current/xpack-uninstalling.html" rel="noreferrer">Uninstalling X-Pack</a>. I know this is old, but I did not know how to do it in the newer version. Anyway, if I run the commands:</p>
  
  <pre><code>bin/elasticsearch-plugin remove x-pack
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get the error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>ERROR: plugin [x-pacl] not found; run 'elasticsearch-plugin list' to
    get the list of installed plugins</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>And  <code>elasticsearch-plugin list</code> doesn't return anything. 
  If I run </p>
  
  <pre><code>bin/kibana-plugin remove x-pack
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Unable to remove plugin because of error: “You are using the standard
    distribution of kibana. Please install the OSS-only distribution to
    remove the X-Pack features.”</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Now my Kibana does not run, complaining that: </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Elasticsearch cluster did not respond with license information..</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>i.e. it does start up, but when you go to the webpage it tells me that it Cannot connect to the Elastic cluster</p>
  
  <p><strong>Questions:</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>What is the OSS-only distribution and where do I download it? </li>
  <li>Is there anyway to not use the trial version license of elastic and use
  all of the parts that are free (as in cost/price) and would not
  expire after x-days? I would like to use all the X-Pack stuff that's free, and not use the X-Pack stuff that's paid. </li>
  </ul>