How to fix 'elasticsearch exited with code 78'

Problem:

You want to run ElasticSearch using docker, but the container immediately stops again using this error message

elasticsearch exited with code 78

or

elasticsearch2 exited with code 78

Solution

If you look through the entire log message, you’ll find lines like

elasticsearch     | [1]: max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] is too low, increase to at least [262144]

Therefore we need to increase the vm.max_map_count limit:

sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=524288

Now we need to edit /etc/sysctl.conf so the setting will also be in effect after a reboot.

Look for any vm.max_map_count line in /etc/sysctl.conf. If you find one, set its value to 524288. If there is no such line present, add the line

vm.max_map_count=524288

to the end of /etc/sysctl.conf

Original source: GitHub