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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.

Open source

Install and run Grafana Loki locally

You can use Grafana Cloud to avoid installing, maintaining, and scaling your own instance of Grafana Loki. Create a free account to get started, which includes free forever access to 10k metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces, 500VUh k6 testing & more.

In order to log events with Grafana Loki, download and install both Promtail and Loki.

  • Loki is the logging engine.
  • Promtail sends logs to Loki.

The configuration specifies running Loki as a single binary.

Install

  1. Navigate to the release page.

  2. Scroll down to the Assets section under the version that you want to install.

  3. Download the Loki and Promtail .zip files that correspond to your system. Note: Do not download LogCLI or Loki Canary at this time. LogCLI allows you to run Loki queries in a command line interface. Loki Canary is a tool to audit Loki performance.

  4. Unzip the package contents into the same directory. This is where the two programs will run.

  5. In the command line, change directory (cd on most systems) to the directory with Loki and Promtail. Copy and paste the commands below into your command line to download generic configuration files. Note: Use the corresponding Git refs that match your downloaded Loki version to get the correct configuration file. For example, if you are using Loki version 2.7.4, you need to use the https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/v2.7.4/cmd/loki/loki-local-config.yaml URL to download the configuration file that corresponds to the Loki version you aim to run.

    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/main/cmd/loki/loki-local-config.yaml
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/main/clients/cmd/promtail/promtail-local-config.yaml
  6. Enter the following command to start Loki:

    Windows

    .\loki-windows-amd64.exe --config.file=loki-local-config.yaml

    Linux

    ./loki-linux-amd64 -config.file=loki-local-config.yaml

Loki runs and displays Loki logs in your command line and on http://localhost:3100/metrics.

The next step will be running an agent to send logs to Loki. To do so with Promtail, refer to get logs into Loki.

Release binaries - openSUSE Linux only

Every release includes binaries for Loki which can be found on the Releases page.

Community openSUSE Linux packages

The community provides packages of Loki for openSUSE Linux. To install:

  1. Add the repository https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/security:/logging/ to your system. For example, if you are using Leap 15.1, run sudo zypper ar https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/security:/logging/openSUSE_Leap_15.1/security:logging.repo ; sudo zypper ref
  2. Install the Loki package with zypper in loki
  3. Enable the Loki and Promtail services:
    • systemd start loki && systemd enable loki
    • systemd start promtail && systemd enable promtail
  4. Modify the configuration files as needed: /etc/loki/promtail.yaml and /etc/loki/loki.yaml.