bingo!
search@secesprd02:~$ ls -ld /etc/elasticsearch/
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug 8 12:17 /etc/elasticsearch/
Thanks Tim!
BTW I was working from the wonderfully detailed instructions that you posted in this thread.
Just btw those instruction are now slightly out of date: bin/x-pack/users useradd... is now bin/elasticsearch-users useradd, at least at 7.17.
An aside: one of the features I dislike in this forum is that threads get closed after a month of inactivity. This prevents good answers being enhanced by new insights or changes in ES. The latter is particularly critical for ES which evolves fast.
Compare this with the Stack Exchange based forums where good answers are frequently updated for years afterward. Also completely new answers are added as new capabilities are added to systems. This again is very relevant to ES!