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Caution

Grafana Alloy is the new name for our distribution of the OTel collector. Grafana Agent has been deprecated and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) through October 31, 2025. Grafana Agent will reach an End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.

Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Documentationbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Agentbreadcrumb arrow Flow modebreadcrumb arrow Set up flow modebreadcrumb arrow Configure flow modebreadcrumb arrow Linux
Open source

Configure Grafana Agent in flow mode on Linux

To configure Grafana Agent in flow mode on Linux, perform the following steps:

  1. Edit the default configuration file at /etc/grafana-agent-flow.river.

  2. Run the following command in a terminal to reload the configuration file:

    shell 
    sudo systemctl reload grafana-agent-flow

To change the configuration file used by the service, perform the following steps:

  1. Edit the environment file for the service:

    • Debian or Ubuntu: edit /etc/default/grafana-agent-flow
    • RHEL/Fedora or SUSE/openSUSE: edit /etc/sysconfig/grafana-agent-flow

  2. Change the contents of the CONFIG_FILE environment variable to point to the new configuration file to use.

  3. Restart the Grafana Agent service:

    shell 
    sudo systemctl restart grafana-agent-flow

Pass additional command-line flags

By default, the Grafana Agent service launches with the run command, passing the following flags:

  • --storage.path=/var/lib/grafana-agent-flow

To pass additional command-line flags to the Grafana Agent binary, perform the following steps:

  1. Edit the environment file for the service:

    • Debian-based systems: edit /etc/default/grafana-agent-flow
    • RedHat or SUSE-based systems: edit /etc/sysconfig/grafana-agent-flow

  2. Change the contents of the CUSTOM_ARGS environment variable to specify command-line flags to pass.

  3. Restart the Grafana Agent service:

    shell 
    sudo systemctl restart grafana-agent-flow

To see the list of valid command-line flags that can be passed to the service, refer to the documentation for the run command.

Expose the UI to other machines

By default, Grafana Agent listens on the local network for its HTTP server. This prevents other machines on the network from being able to access the UI for debugging.

To expose the UI to other machines, complete the following steps:

  1. Follow Pass additional command-line flags to edit command line flags passed to Grafana Agent, including the following customizations:

    1. Add the following command line argument to CUSTOM_ARGS:

      shell 
      --server.http.listen-addr=LISTEN_ADDR:12345

      Replace LISTEN_ADDR with an address which other machines on the network have access to, like the network IP address of the machine Grafana Agent is running on.

      To listen on all interfaces, replace LISTEN_ADDR with 0.0.0.0.