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Promtail

Install Promtail

Open source

Install Promtail

Promtail is distributed as a binary, in a Docker container, or there is a Helm chart to install it in a Kubernetes cluster.

Install the binary

Every Grafana Loki release includes binaries for Promtail which can be found on the Releases page as part of the release assets.

Install using APT or RPM package manager

See the instructions here.

Install using Docker

# modify tag to most recent version
docker pull grafana/promtail:2.9.2

Install using Helm

Make sure that Helm is installed. See Installing Helm. Then you can add Grafana’s chart repository to Helm:

helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts

And the chart repository can be updated by running:

helm repo update

Create the configuration file values.yaml. The example below illustrates a connection to the locally deployed loki server:

config:
  # publish data to loki
  clients:
    - url: http://loki-gateway/loki/api/v1/push
      tenant_id: 1

Finally, Promtail can be deployed with:

# The default helm configuration deploys promtail as a daemonSet (recommended)
helm upgrade --values values.yaml --install promtail grafana/promtail

Install as Kubernetes daemonSet (recommended)

A DaemonSet will deploy Promtail on every node within a Kubernetes cluster.

The DaemonSet deployment works well at collecting the logs of all containers within a cluster. It’s the best solution for a single-tenant model. Replace {YOUR_LOKI_ENDPOINT} with your Loki endpoint.

--- # Daemonset.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: promtail-daemonset
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      name: promtail
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        name: promtail
    spec:
      serviceAccount: promtail-serviceaccount
      containers:
      - name: promtail-container
        image: grafana/promtail
        args:
        - -config.file=/etc/promtail/promtail.yaml
        env: 
        - name: 'HOSTNAME' # needed when using kubernetes_sd_configs
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: 'spec.nodeName'
        volumeMounts:
        - name: logs
          mountPath: /var/log
        - name: promtail-config
          mountPath: /etc/promtail
        - mountPath: /var/lib/docker/containers
          name: varlibdockercontainers
          readOnly: true
      volumes:
      - name: logs
        hostPath:
          path: /var/log
      - name: varlibdockercontainers
        hostPath:
          path: /var/lib/docker/containers
      - name: promtail-config
        configMap:
          name: promtail-config
--- # configmap.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: promtail-config
data:
  promtail.yaml: |
    server:
      http_listen_port: 9080
      grpc_listen_port: 0

    clients:
    - url: https://{YOUR_LOKI_ENDPOINT}/loki/api/v1/push

    positions:
      filename: /tmp/positions.yaml
    target_config:
      sync_period: 10s
    scrape_configs:
    - job_name: pod-logs
      kubernetes_sd_configs:
        - role: pod
      pipeline_stages:
        - docker: {}
      relabel_configs:
        - source_labels:
            - __meta_kubernetes_pod_node_name
          target_label: __host__
        - action: labelmap
          regex: __meta_kubernetes_pod_label_(.+)
        - action: replace
          replacement: $1
          separator: /
          source_labels:
            - __meta_kubernetes_namespace
            - __meta_kubernetes_pod_name
          target_label: job
        - action: replace
          source_labels:
            - __meta_kubernetes_namespace
          target_label: namespace
        - action: replace
          source_labels:
            - __meta_kubernetes_pod_name
          target_label: pod
        - action: replace
          source_labels:
            - __meta_kubernetes_pod_container_name
          target_label: container
        - replacement: /var/log/pods/*$1/*.log
          separator: /
          source_labels:
            - __meta_kubernetes_pod_uid
            - __meta_kubernetes_pod_container_name
          target_label: __path__

--- # Clusterrole.yaml
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: promtail-clusterrole
rules:
  - apiGroups: [""]
    resources:
    - nodes
    - services
    - pods
    verbs:
    - get
    - watch
    - list

--- # ServiceAccount.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: promtail-serviceaccount

--- # Rolebinding.yaml
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: promtail-clusterrolebinding
subjects:
    - kind: ServiceAccount
      name: promtail-serviceaccount
      namespace: default
roleRef:
    kind: ClusterRole
    name: promtail-clusterrole
    apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io