As written on the official page about how to Install Elasticsearch with Docker you need:

1. Install Docker (of course)
2. Create a new docker network

   docker network create elastic
   

3. Start Elasticsearch in Docker. A password is generated each time for a new cluster. If you don't see it because of a bunch of logs, scroll down and it will be there, together with a Kibana enrolment token.

    docker run --name es01 --net elastic -p 9200:9200 -p 9300:9300 -it docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.4.2
   

If you run it with this command, ES will have default configurations. If you want to override them you need to mount a configuration file instead of one inside the container. I advise you to copy one from this running container. Then stop it, and delete it from docker. And launch another one with a mounted file.

To do it, do the following: Copy conf file from container to your host

docker cp es01:/usr/share/elasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml .

Then change any configuration you like. For example, you can turn off authentification at all:

xpack.security.enabled: false

xpack.security.enrollment.enabled: false

And comment/uncomment anything you want.

Then launch a new container with mounted conf file

docker run --name es01 \
        --net elastic \
        -p 9200:9200 -p 9300:9300 \
        -v "$(pwd)"/elasticsearch.yml:/usr/share/elasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml \
        -e "discovery.type=single-node" -t docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.4.2

Be aware to set the full path to your local conf file. Otherwise, it will not work.