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.

Ingest logs using Promtail

Enterprise

Ingest logs using Promtail

Promtail is an agent that ships the contents of local logs to Grafana Enterprise Logs (GEL).

Verify that Promtail is running

Because there are several ways to Install Promtail, there are also several ways to verify that it is running. If you need help at all, submit a Support Enquiry.

For the following common installation methods, check that Promtail is running:

binary: To check that the executable is running, use ps -ef | grep promtail.
Docker: To check if a Promtail container is running, run docker ps.
Kubernetes: To check that Promtail pods are running, use the kubectl get pods | grep promtail command when you are in the correct namespace.

Configure Promtail to write to GEL

To configure Promtail to send logs to the demo tenant, add a clients block to its configuration.

Example of a minimal configuration:

server:
  http_listen_port: 9080
  grpc_listen_port: 0

positions:
  filename: /tmp/positions.yaml

clients:
  - url: http://enterprise-logs:3100/loki/api/v1/push
    basic_auth:
      username: demo
      password: <token>

scrape_configs:
- job_name: system
  static_configs:
  - targets:
      - localhost
    labels:
      job: varlogs
      __path__: /var/log/*log

For more information, refer to Configuring Promtail.

Run this Promtail configuration using Docker

To run this configuration, store the preceding configuration locally in the file promtail.yaml, and run the following code:

$ docker run \
   -d \
   --name=demo-promtail \
   --network=enterprise-logs \
   -v $(pwd)/promtail.yaml:/etc/promtail/config.yml:z \
   grafana/promtail:2.1.0