Caution

Grafana Agent has reached End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Agent is no longer receiving vendor support and will no longer receive security or bug fixes. Current users of Agent Static mode, Agent Flow mode, and Agent Operator should proceed with migrating to Grafana Alloy. If you have already migrated to Alloy, no further action is required. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.

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Open source

Run Grafana Agent Flow as a standalone binary

If you downloaded the standalone binary, you must run Grafana Agent Flow from a terminal or command window.

Start Grafana Agent Flow on Linux, macOS, or FreeBSD

To start Grafana Agent Flow on Linux, macOS, or FreeBSD, run the following command in a terminal window:

shell 
AGENT_MODE=flow <BINARY_PATH> run <CONFIG_PATH>

Replace the following:

  • <BINARY_PATH>: The path to the Grafana Agent Flow binary file.
  • <CONFIG_PATH>: The path to the Grafana Agent Flow configuration file.

Start Grafana Agent Flow on Windows

To start Grafana Agent Flow on Windows, run the following commands in a command prompt:

cmd 
set AGENT_MODE=flow
<BINARY_PATH> run <CONFIG_PATH>

Replace the following:

  • <BINARY_PATH>: The path to the Grafana Agent Flow binary file.
  • <CONFIG_PATH>: The path to the Grafana Agent Flow configuration file.

Set up Grafana Agent Flow as a Linux systemd service

You can set up and manage the standalone binary for Grafana Agent Flow as a Linux systemd service.

Note

These steps assume you have a default systemd and Grafana Agent Flow configuration.

  1. To create a new user called grafana-agent-flow run the following command in a terminal window:

    shell 
    sudo useradd --no-create-home --shell /bin/false grafana-agent-flow

  2. Create a service file in /etc/systemd/system called grafana-agent-flow.service with the following contents:

    systemd 
    [Unit]
Description=Vendor-neutral programmable observability pipelines.
Documentation=https://grafana.com/docs/agent/latest/flow/
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always
User=grafana-agent-flow
Environment=HOSTNAME=%H
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/grafana-agent-flow
WorkingDirectory=<WORKING_DIRECTORY>
ExecStart=<BINARY_PATH> run $CUSTOM_ARGS --storage.path=<WORKING_DIRECTORY> $CONFIG_FILE
ExecReload=/usr/bin/env kill -HUP $MAINPID
TimeoutStopSec=20s
SendSIGKILL=no

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

    Replace the following:

    • <BINARY_PATH>: The path to the Grafana Agent Flow binary file.
    • <WORKING_DIRECTORY>: The path to a working directory, for example /var/lib/grafana-agent-flow.

  3. Create an environment file in /etc/default/ called grafana-agent-flow with the following contents:

    shell 
    ## Path:
## Description: Grafana Agent Flow settings
## Type:        string
## Default:     ""
## ServiceRestart: grafana-agent-flow
#
# Command line options for grafana-agent
#
# The configuration file holding the Grafana Agent Flow configuration.
CONFIG_FILE="<CONFIG_PATH>"

# User-defined arguments to pass to the run command.
CUSTOM_ARGS=""

# Restart on system upgrade. Defaults to true.
RESTART_ON_UPGRADE=true

    Replace the following:

    • <CONFIG_PATH>: The path to the Grafana Agent Flow configuration file.

  4. To reload the service files, run the following command in a terminal window:

    shell 
    sudo systemctl daemon-reload

  5. Use the Linux systemd commands to manage your standalone Linux installation of Grafana Agent Flow.