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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.

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Installing on Debian / Ubuntu

DescriptionDownload
Stable for Debian-based Linuxgrafana_4.4.3_amd64.deb

Read Upgrading Grafana for tips and guidance on updating an existing installation.

Install Stable

bash
wget https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/grafana-releases/release/grafana_4.4.3_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install -y adduser libfontconfig
sudo dpkg -i grafana_4.4.3_amd64.deb

APT Repository

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

deb https://packagecloud.io/grafana/stable/debian/ jessie main

Use the above line even if you are on Ubuntu or another Debian version. There is also a testing repository if you want beta or release candidates.

deb https://packagecloud.io/grafana/testing/debian/ jessie main

Then add the Package Cloud key. This allows you to install signed packages.

bash
curl https://packagecloud.io/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

Update your Apt repositories and install Grafana

bash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grafana

On some older versions of Ubuntu and Debian you may need to install the apt-transport-https package which is needed to fetch packages over HTTPS.

bash
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https

Package details

  • Installs binary to /usr/sbin/grafana-server
  • Installs Init.d script to /etc/init.d/grafana-server
  • Creates default file (environment vars) to /etc/default/grafana-server
  • Installs configuration file to /etc/grafana/grafana.ini
  • Installs systemd service (if systemd is available) name grafana-server.service
  • The default configuration sets the log file at /var/log/grafana/grafana.log
  • The default configuration specifies an sqlite3 db at /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db
  • Installs HTML/JS/CSS and other Grafana files at /usr/share/grafana

Start the server (init.d service)

Start Grafana by running:

bash
sudo service grafana-server start

This will start the grafana-server process as the grafana user, which was created during the package installation. The default HTTP port is 3000 and default user and group is admin.

To configure the Grafana server to start at boot time:

bash
sudo update-rc.d grafana-server defaults

Start the server (via systemd)

To start the service using systemd:

bash
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start grafana-server
systemctl status grafana-server

Enable the systemd service so that Grafana starts at boot.

bash
sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service

Environment file

The systemd service file and init.d script both use the file located at /etc/default/grafana-server for environment variables used when starting the back-end. Here you can override log directory, data directory and other variables.

Logging

By default Grafana will log to /var/log/grafana

Database

The default configuration specifies a sqlite3 database located at /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db. Please backup this database before upgrades. You can also use MySQL or Postgres as the Grafana database, as detailed on the configuration page.

Configuration

The configuration file is located at /etc/grafana/grafana.ini. Go the Configuration page for details on all those options.

Adding data sources

Installing from binary tar file

Download the latest .tar.gz file and extract it. This will extract into a folder named after the version you downloaded. This folder contains all files required to run Grafana. There are no init scripts or install scripts in this package.

To configure Grafana add a configuration file named custom.ini to the conf folder and override any of the settings defined in conf/defaults.ini.

Start Grafana by executing ./bin/grafana-server web. The grafana-server binary needs the working directory to be the root install directory (where the binary and the public folder is located).