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Set up Grafana CLI

You can configure Grafana CLI in two ways: using environment variables or through a configuration file.

  • Environment variables are ideal for CI environments and support a single context. A full list of supported environment variables is available in the reference documentation.
  • Configuration files can manage multiple contexts, making it easier to switch between different Grafana instances.

Note

Configuration items may change depending on your set-up. For example, use org-id for Grafana on-prem, but use stack-id for Grafana Cloud.

Configure Grafana CLI with environment variables

Grafana CLI communicates with Grafana via its REST API, which requires authentication credentials.

At a minimum, set the URL of your Grafana instance and the organization ID:

Bash 
GRAFANA_SERVER='http://localhost:3000' GRAFANA_ORG_ID='1' grafanactl config check

Depending on your authentication method, you may also need to set:

To persist your configuration, consider creating a context.

Use configuration contexts

Contexts allow you to easily switch between multiple Grafana instances.

By default, the CLI uses a context named default. To configure it use:

Bash 
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.server http://localhost:3000
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.org-id 1

# Authenticate with a service account token
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.token service-account-token

# Or use basic authentication
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.user admin
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.password admin

You can define additional contexts in the same way:

Bash 
grafanactl config set contexts.staging.grafana.server https://staging.grafana.example
grafanactl config set contexts.staging.grafana.org-id 1

Note

In these examples, default and staging are the names of the contexts.

Configure Grafana CLI with configuration files

Grafana CLI stores its configuration in a YAML file. The CLI determines the configuration file location in the following order:

  1. If the --config flag is provided, the specified file is used.
  2. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/grafanactl/config.yaml
  3. If $HOME is set: $HOME/.config/grafanactl/config.yaml
  4. If $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set: $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/grafanactl/config.yaml

Note

Use grafanactl config check to display the configuration file currently in use.

Useful commands

Check the current configuration:

Bash 
grafanactl config check

Note

This command is useful to troubleshoot your configuration.

List all available contexts:

Bash 
grafanactl config list-contexts

Switch to a specific context:

Bash 
grafanactl config use-context staging

View the full configuration:

Bash 
grafanactl config view