Run Telegraf as a service

The Telegraf packages install Telegraf as a system service. Use your platform’s service manager to start, stop, and inspect it:

• Linux (systemd)
• macOS (Homebrew and launchd)
• Windows

Linux (systemd)

The .deb and .rpm packages install a telegraf systemd unit that runs Telegraf with /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf and the /etc/telegraf/telegraf.d configuration directory.

Manage the service with systemctl:

# Start, stop, or restart the service
sudo systemctl start telegraf
sudo systemctl stop telegraf
sudo systemctl restart telegraf

# Reload the configuration without restarting
sudo systemctl reload telegraf

# Start the service at boot
sudo systemctl enable telegraf

# Check service status
sudo systemctl status telegraf

reload sends the SIGHUP signal, which makes Telegraf reload its configuration files without restarting the process.

The unit reads environment variables from /etc/default/telegraf. Use this file to define variables referenced in your configuration and to pass extra command-line options through the TELEGRAF_OPTS variable. See Environment variables.

When running under systemd, Telegraf logs to the journal unless the logfile setting points elsewhere:

journalctl --unit telegraf

macOS (Homebrew and launchd)

When Telegraf is installed with Homebrew, use brew services to manage it with launchd:

# Start the service and register it to start at login
brew services start telegraf

# Restart or stop the service
brew services restart telegraf
brew services stop telegraf

# Check service status
brew services info telegraf

To manage the launch agent manually instead, symlink the .plist that Homebrew installs into your LaunchAgents and load it:

# ARM (Apple Silicon) systems; use /usr/local on Intel systems
ln -sfv /opt/homebrew/opt/telegraf/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.telegraf.plist

Windows

To install Telegraf as a Windows service, see Install Telegraf.

Telegraf manages its own Windows service through the service command:

When installing the service, pass the absolute path of the configuration file. Relative paths cause the service to fail at startup with Windows error 1067:

.\telegraf.exe --config "C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\telegraf.conf" `
service install

To include a configuration directory, add the --config-directory option before the service install command.

Run multiple Telegraf services

Running multiple Telegraf instances is seldom needed: you can define multiple instances of any plugin and route metrics with metric filtering. If you do need separate services, install each with unique names:

.\telegraf.exe --service-name telegraf-1 service install --display-name "Telegraf 1"
.\telegraf.exe --service-name telegraf-2 service install --display-name "Telegraf 2"

Automatically restart the service

By default, the Windows service doesn’t restart on failure. To enable automatic restarts, install the service with the --auto-restart flag. The default restart delay is 5 minutes. Change it with --restart-delay and a duration, such as --restart-delay 3m.

Windows service logging

When Telegraf runs as a Windows service, it logs service startup messages to the Windows event log. View them in Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application. Messages and errors that occur during runtime go to the configured log target.

Service killed during shutdown

When Windows shuts down, Telegraf tries to stop cleanly: it stops all plugins and flushes remaining metrics to the outputs. Windows kills services after a predefined timeout (usually 5 seconds), which can interrupt the final flush. To extend the timeout, change the following registry value, in milliseconds:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WaitToKillServiceTimeout