Run Grafana Alloy on Grafana Labs

Run Grafana Alloy on Linux

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:47:22 +0000

Run Grafana Alloy on Linux

Alloy is installed as a systemd service on Linux.

Start Alloy

To start Alloy, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo systemctl start alloy

Optional: To verify that the service is running, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo systemctl status alloy

Configure Alloy to start at boot

To automatically run Alloy when the system starts, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo systemctl enable alloy.service

Restart Alloy

To restart Alloy, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo systemctl restart alloy

Stop Alloy

To stop Alloy, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo systemctl stop alloy

View Alloy logs

To view Alloy log files, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo journalctl -u alloy

Next steps

Configure Alloy

Run Grafana Alloy on macOS

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:47:22 +0000

Run Grafana Alloy on macOS

Alloy is installed as a launchd service on macOS.

Start Alloy

To start Alloy, run the following command in a terminal window:

brew services start grafana/grafana/alloy

Alloy automatically runs when the system starts.

Optional: To verify that the service is running, run the following command in a terminal window:

brew services info grafana/grafana/alloy

Restart Alloy

To restart Alloy, run the following command in a terminal window:

brew services restart grafana/grafana/alloy

Stop Alloy

To stop Alloy, run the following command in a terminal window:

brew services stop grafana/grafana/alloy

View Alloy logs

By default, logs are written to $(brew --prefix)/var/log/alloy.log and $(brew --prefix)/var/log/alloy.err.log.

If you followed Configure the Alloy service and changed the path where logs are written, refer to your current copy of the Alloy formula to locate your log files.

Next steps

Configure Alloy

Run Grafana Alloy on Windows

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:47:22 +0000

Run Grafana Alloy on Windows

Alloy is installed as a Windows Service. The service is configured to automatically run on startup.

To verify that Alloy is running as a Windows Service:

Open the Windows Services manager:
1. Right click on the Start Menu and select Run.
2. Type: services.msc and click OK.
Scroll down to find the Alloy service and verify that the Status is Running.

View Alloy logs

When running on Windows, Alloy writes its logs to Windows Event Logs with an event source name of Alloy.

To view the logs, perform the following steps:

Open the Event Viewer:
1. Right click on the Start Menu and select Run.
2. Type eventvwr and click OK.
In the Event Viewer, click on Windows Logs > Application.
Search for events with the source Grafana Alloy.

Next steps

Configure Alloy

Run Grafana Alloy as a standalone binary

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:47:22 +0000

Run Grafana Alloy as a standalone binary

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

Refer to the run documentation for more information about the command line flags you can use when you run Alloy.

Start Alloy

To start Alloy, run the following command in a terminal or command window:

<BINARY_PATH> run <CONFIG_PATH>

Replace the following:

<BINARY_PATH>: The path to the Alloy binary file.
<CONFIG_PATH>: The path to the Alloy configuration file.

Set up Alloy as a Linux systemd service

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

Note
These steps assume you have a default systemd and Alloy configuration.

To create a user called alloy run the following command in a terminal window:
shell
```
sudo useradd --no-create-home --shell /bin/false alloy
```

Create a service file in /etc/systemd/system called alloy.service with the following contents:

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

[Service]
Restart=always
User=alloy
Environment=HOSTNAME=%H
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/alloy
WorkingDirectory=<WORKING_DIRECTORY>
ExecStart=<BINARY_PATH> run $CUSTOM_ARGS --storage.path=<WORKING_DIRECTORY> $CONFIG_FILE
ExecReload=/usr/bin/env kill -HUP $MAINPID
TimeoutStopSec=20s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Replace the following:

<BINARY_PATH>: The path to the Alloy binary file.
<WORKING_DIRECTORY>: The path to a working directory, for example /var/lib/alloy.

Create an environment file in /etc/default/ called alloy with the following contents:

## Path:
## Description: Grafana Alloy settings
## Type:        string
## Default:     ""
## ServiceRestart: alloy
#
# Command line options for alloy
#
# The configuration file holding the Grafana Alloy 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 Alloy configuration file.

To reload the service files, run the following command in a terminal window:
shell
```
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
```
Use the Linux systemd commands to manage your standalone Linux installation of Alloy.

View Alloy logs

By default, Alloy writes the output to stdout and errors to stderr.

To write the output and error logs to a file, you can use the redirection operator for your operating system. For example, the following command combines the standard output and standard errors into a single text file:

<BINARY_PATH> run <CONFIG_PATH> &> <OUTPUT_FILE>

<BINARY_PATH> run <CONFIG_PATH> &> <OUTPUT_FILE>

<BINARY_PATH> run <CONFIG_PATH> 1> <OUTPUT_FILE> 2>&1

Replace the following:

<BINARY_PATH>: The path to the Alloy binary file.
<CONFIG_PATH>: The path to the Alloy configuration file.
<OUTPUT_FILE>: The output filename.