# You must set the ES\_CLASSPATH var
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/you-must-set-the-es-classpath-var/7868
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 25, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/you-must-set-the-es-classpath-var/7868 "2012-05-25T16:25:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hsiu](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hsiu)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/you-must-set-the-es-classpath-var/7868/1 "2012-05-25T16:25:00Z")
I have searched and found no help on this - one was an internal bug re: CLASSPATH/ES\_CLASSPATH, and one was on this group that went nowhere:
[http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/Getting-an-error-of-ES-CLASSPATH-not-found-td3400994.html](http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/Getting-an-error-of-ES-CLASSPATH-not-found-td3400994.html)
I have installed elastic search on Kubuntu 12.04. I have the executable linked, and the daemon starter script (like apache, et al) at /etc/init.d
When I try to `start`, I get the following error:
You must set the ES\_CLASSPATH var
No further information given. Indeed, I had no ES\_CLASSPATH environment variable set. I tried setting it to where I found several JARs in elasticsearch:
/usr/local/share/elasticsearch/lib
/usr/local/share/elasticsearch/bin/service/lib
Then I get the following error:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/elasticsearch/bootstrap/ElasticSearch
Any advice as to what this variable should be?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 3:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/you-must-set-the-es-classpath-var/7868/2 "2017-07-06T03:27:05Z")