The configuration files for Elasticsearch 7 are located in the folder /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch, those for Elasticsearch 5 are located under /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch5, those for Elasticsearch 6 under /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch6.
By default, the folders for configuration files of programs under FreeBSD belong to the user "root" and the group "wheel".

Elasticsearch tries to change configuration entries on its own the first time it is started after an update, but cannot do this if the folder belongs to "root". The start may therefore fail.

In the case of Elasticsearch, it may be necessary and useful to give the ownership settings for the configuration folders to the user with whom Elasticsearch is executed. Unless otherwise configured by the customer, this is the user "elasticsearch" with the group "elasticsearch".

You can generally change the ownership of a folder with the command

chown -R <user>:<group> <folder>

In this case, the call could look like this

chown -R elasticsearch:elasticsearch /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch

Changing the ownership may have security implications. If you are not quite sure whether you should change it, please contact us!