alternative to sudo /etc/init.d/elasticsearch start - elasticsearch

Question

I am trying to run elasticsearch through supervisord. To do this I need a command to start elasticsearch without running it in the background. My current supervisord script looks like
[program:elasticsearch]
command=/etc/init.d/elasticsearch start
autostart=true
autorestart=true
startretries=3
user=root
stdout_logfile=/var/www/elasticsearch_std.log
but since the '/etc/init.d/elasticsearch start' command runs elasticsearch in the background, it tries to start elasticsearch again as soon as the command returns a successful launch, which results in
DEBG 'elasticsearch' stdout output:
* Already running.
...done.
Since I told supervisord to restart 3 times, it will do that three times before giving up. However, the purpose of this is of course that supervisord should restart elasticsearch in case of a crash.
So I need a command which starts elasticsearch in the foreground.
EDIT:
Following the suggestion below and the elasticsearch instruction from https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/settings.html I tried to run
/usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch -Epath.conf=/etc/elasticsearch -Epath.logs=/var/log/elasticsearch -Epath.data=/var/lib/elasticsearch
Error: encountered environment variables that are no longer supported
Use jvm.options or ES_JAVA_OPTS to configure the JVM
ES_HEAP_SIZE=256m: set -Xms256m and -Xmx256m in jvm.options or add "-Xms256m -Xmx256m" to ES_JAVA_OPTS
I do not understand this error message since I already set
-Xms256m
-Xmx256m
in /etc/elasticsearch/jvm.options
EDIT2: I also tried to set these parameters through the environment, which did not work either
ES_JAVA_OPTS="-Xms256m -Xmx256m" /usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch -Epath.conf=/etc/elasticsearch -Epath.logs=/var/log/elasticsearch -Epath.data=/var/lib/elasticsearch
Error: encountered environment variables that are no longer supported
Use jvm.options or ES_JAVA_OPTS to configure the JVM
ES_HEAP_SIZE=256m: set -Xms256m and -Xmx256m in jvm.options or add "-Xms256m -Xmx256m" to ES_JAVA_OPTS
the /etc/default/elasticsearch file has all lines commented out except
ES_STARTUP_SLEEP_TIME=5

Answer 1

Start elasticsearch directly with bin/elasticsearch. Using the init file will daemonize and exit immediately, which is not suitable for supervisor.
Instead, set the command attribute to something like:
command=/usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch
-Edefault.path.conf=/etc/elasticsearch
-Edefault.path.logs=/var/log/elasticsearch
-Edefault.path.data=/var/lib/elasticsearch
replacing the paths accordingly.
You can also set the default.path.conf and edit the YAML file inside for the data and log settings (amongst others).