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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.

Open source

loki.source.kubernetes_events

loki.source.kubernetes_events tails events from the Kubernetes API and converts them into log lines to forward to other loki components.

Multiple loki.source.kubernetes_events components can be specified by giving them different labels.

Usage

river
loki.source.kubernetes_events "LABEL" {
  forward_to = RECEIVER_LIST
}

Arguments

The component starts a new reader for each of the given targets and fans out log entries to the list of receivers passed in forward_to.

loki.source.kubernetes_events supports the following arguments:

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
job_namestringValue to use for job label for generated logs."loki.source.kubernetes_events"no
log_formatstringFormat of the log."logfmt"no
namespaceslist(string)Namespaces to watch for Events in.[]no
forward_tolist(LogsReceiver)List of receivers to send log entries to.yes

By default, loki.source.kubernetes_events will watch for events in all namespaces. A list of explicit namespaces to watch can be provided in the namespaces argument.

By default, the generated log lines will be in the logfmt format. Use the log_format argument to change it to json. These formats are also names of LogQL parsers, which can be used for processing the logs.

NOTE: When watching all namespaces, Grafana Agent Flow must have permissions to watch events at the cluster scope (such as using a ClusterRoleBinding). If an explicit list of namespaces is provided, Grafana Agent Flow only needs permissions to watch events for those namespaces.

Log lines generated by loki.source.kubernetes_events have the following labels:

  • namespace: Namespace of the Kubernetes object involved in the event.
  • job: Value specified by the job_name argument.
  • instance: Value matching the component ID.

If job_name argument is the empty string, the component will fail to load. To remove the job label, forward the output of loki.source.kubernetes_events to a loki.relabel component.

For compatibility with the eventhandler integration from static mode, job_name can be set to "integrations/kubernetes/eventhandler".

Blocks

The following blocks are supported inside the definition of loki.source.kubernetes_events:

HierarchyBlockDescriptionRequired
clientclientConfigures Kubernetes client used to tail logs.no
client > basic_authbasic_authConfigure basic_auth for authenticating to the endpoint.no
client > authorizationauthorizationConfigure generic authorization to the endpoint.no
client > oauth2oauth2Configure OAuth2 for authenticating to the endpoint.no
client > oauth2 > tls_configtls_configConfigure TLS settings for connecting to the endpoint.no
client > tls_configtls_configConfigure TLS settings for connecting to the endpoint.no

The > symbol indicates deeper levels of nesting. For example, client > basic_auth refers to a basic_auth block defined inside a client block.

client block

The client block configures the Kubernetes client used to tail logs from containers. If the client block isn’t provided, the default in-cluster configuration with the service account of the running Grafana Agent pod is used.

The following arguments are supported:

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
api_serverstringURL of the Kubernetes API server.no
kubeconfig_filestringPath of the kubeconfig file to use for connecting to Kubernetes.no
bearer_token_filestringFile containing a bearer token to authenticate with.no
bearer_tokensecretBearer token to authenticate with.no
enable_http2boolWhether HTTP2 is supported for requests.trueno
follow_redirectsboolWhether redirects returned by the server should be followed.trueno
proxy_urlstringHTTP proxy to send requests through.no
no_proxystringComma-separated list of IP addresses, CIDR notations, and domain names to exclude from proxying.no
proxy_from_environmentboolUse the proxy URL indicated by environment variables.falseno
proxy_connect_headermap(list(secret))Specifies headers to send to proxies during CONNECT requests.no

At most, one of the following can be provided:

no_proxy can contain IPs, CIDR notations, and domain names. IP and domain names can contain port numbers. proxy_url must be configured if no_proxy is configured.

proxy_from_environment uses the environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY (or the lowercase versions thereof). Requests use the proxy from the environment variable matching their scheme, unless excluded by NO_PROXY. proxy_url and no_proxy must not be configured if proxy_from_environment is configured.

proxy_connect_header should only be configured if proxy_url or proxy_from_environment are configured.

basic_auth block

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
password_filestringFile containing the basic auth password.no
passwordsecretBasic auth password.no
usernamestringBasic auth username.no

password and password_file are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside a basic_auth block.

authorization block

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
credentials_filestringFile containing the secret value.no
credentialssecretSecret value.no
typestringAuthorization type, for example, “Bearer”.no

credential and credentials_file are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside an authorization block.

oauth2 block

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
client_idstringOAuth2 client ID.no
client_secret_filestringFile containing the OAuth2 client secret.no
client_secretsecretOAuth2 client secret.no
endpoint_paramsmap(string)Optional parameters to append to the token URL.no
proxy_urlstringHTTP proxy to send requests through.no
no_proxystringComma-separated list of IP addresses, CIDR notations, and domain names to exclude from proxying.no
proxy_from_environmentboolUse the proxy URL indicated by environment variables.falseno
proxy_connect_headermap(list(secret))Specifies headers to send to proxies during CONNECT requests.no
scopeslist(string)List of scopes to authenticate with.no
token_urlstringURL to fetch the token from.no

client_secret and client_secret_file are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside an oauth2 block.

The oauth2 block may also contain a separate tls_config sub-block.

no_proxy can contain IPs, CIDR notations, and domain names. IP and domain names can contain port numbers. proxy_url must be configured if no_proxy is configured.

proxy_from_environment uses the environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY (or the lowercase versions thereof). Requests use the proxy from the environment variable matching their scheme, unless excluded by NO_PROXY. proxy_url and no_proxy must not be configured if proxy_from_environment is configured.

proxy_connect_header should only be configured if proxy_url or proxy_from_environment are configured.

tls_config block

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
ca_pemstringCA PEM-encoded text to validate the server with.no
ca_filestringCA certificate to validate the server with.no
cert_pemstringCertificate PEM-encoded text for client authentication.no
cert_filestringCertificate file for client authentication.no
insecure_skip_verifyboolDisables validation of the server certificate.no
key_filestringKey file for client authentication.no
key_pemsecretKey PEM-encoded text for client authentication.no
min_versionstringMinimum acceptable TLS version.no
server_namestringServerName extension to indicate the name of the server.no

The following pairs of arguments are mutually exclusive and can’t both be set simultaneously:

  • ca_pem and ca_file
  • cert_pem and cert_file
  • key_pem and key_file

When configuring client authentication, both the client certificate (using cert_pem or cert_file) and the client key (using key_pem or key_file) must be provided.

When min_version is not provided, the minimum acceptable TLS version is inherited from Go’s default minimum version, TLS 1.2. If min_version is provided, it must be set to one of the following strings:

  • "TLS10" (TLS 1.0)
  • "TLS11" (TLS 1.1)
  • "TLS12" (TLS 1.2)
  • "TLS13" (TLS 1.3)

Exported fields

loki.source.kubernetes_events does not export any fields.

Component health

loki.source.kubernetes_events is only reported as unhealthy if given an invalid configuration.

Debug information

loki.source.kubernetes_events exposes the most recently read timestamp for events in each watched namespace.

Debug metrics

loki.source.kubernetes_events does not expose any component-specific debug metrics.

Component behavior

The component uses its data path, a directory named after the domain’s fully qualified name, to store its positions file. The positions file is used to store read offsets, so that if a component or Grafana Agent restarts, loki.source.kubernetes_events can pick up tailing from the same spot.

The data path is inside the directory configured by the --storage.path command line argument.

In the Static mode’s eventhandler integration, a cache_path argument is used to configure a positions file. In Flow mode, this argument is no longer necessary.

Example

This example collects watches events in the kube-system namespace and forwards them to a loki.write component so they are written to Loki.

river
loki.source.kubernetes_events "example" {
  // Only watch for events in the kube-system namespace.
  namespaces = ["kube-system"]

  forward_to = [loki.write.local.receiver]
}

loki.write "local" {
  endpoint {
    url = env("LOKI_URL")
  }
}

Compatible components

loki.source.kubernetes_events can accept arguments from the following components:

Note

Connecting some components may not be sensible or components may require further configuration to make the connection work correctly. Refer to the linked documentation for more details.