Documentation

Telegraf

Install Telegraf

This page provides directions for installing, starting, and configuring Telegraf. To install Telegraf, do the following:

Requirements

Installation of the Telegraf package may require root or administrator privileges to complete successfully.

Networking

Telegraf offers multiple service input plugins that may require custom ports. Modify port mappings through the configuration file (telegraf.conf).

For Linux distributions, this file is located at /etc/telegraf for default installations.

For Windows distributions, the configuration file is located in the directory where you unzipped the Telegraf ZIP archive. The default location is C:\InfluxData\telegraf.

NTP

Telegraf uses a host’s local time in UTC to assign timestamps to data. Use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize time between hosts. If hosts’ clocks aren’t synchronized with NTP, the timestamps on the data might be inaccurate.

Download and install Telegraf

Recommended:: Before you open and install packages and downloaded files, use SHA checksum verification and GPG signature verification to ensure the files are intact and authentic.

SHA checksum and GPG signature verification are complementary checks.

For some Linux platforms, the installation instructions include steps to verify downloaded packages and binaries.

For more information, see the following:

Verify download integrity using SHA-256

Verify file integrity and authenticity using GPG

Ubuntu & Debian RedHat & CentOS SLES & openSUSE FreeBSD/PC-BSD Linux binaries (AMD) Linux binaries (ARM) macOS Windows

Debian and Ubuntu users can install the latest stable version of Telegraf using the apt-get package manager.

Install from the InfluxData repository

Run the following commands using apt-get to install Telegraf from the InfluxData repository:

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and newer Older than Ubuntu 20.04

curl --silent --location -O \
https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive.key \
&& echo "943666881a1b8d9b849b74caebf02d3465d6beb716510d86a39f6c8e8dac7515  influxdata-archive.key" \
| sha256sum -c - && cat influxdata-archive.key \
| gpg --dearmor \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive.gpg > /dev/null \
&& echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive.gpg] https://repos.influxdata.com/debian stable main' \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdata.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install telegraf

# influxdata-archive_compat.key GPG Fingerprint: 9D539D90D3328DC7D6C8D3B9D8FF8E1F7DF8B07E
curl --silent --location -O \
https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key \
&& echo "393e8779c89ac8d958f81f942f9ad7fb82a25e133faddaf92e15b16e6ac9ce4c  influxdata-archive_compat.key" \
| sha256sum -c - \
&& cat influxdata-archive_compat.key \
| gpg --dearmor \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive_compat.gpg > /dev/null
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive_compat.gpg] https://repos.influxdata.com/debian stable main' \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdata.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install telegraf

Install from a .deb file

To manually install the Debian package from a .deb file:

  1. Download the latest Telegraf .deb release from the downloads page.

  2. Run the following command (making sure to supply the correct version number for the downloaded file):

    sudo dpkg -i telegraf_1.32.3-1_amd64.deb

To learn how to manually install the RPM package from a file, see the downloads page.

To use the yum package manager to install the latest stable version of Telegraf, follow these steps:

  1. In your terminal, enter the following command to add the InfluxData repository to the yum configuration:

    cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/influxdata.repo
[influxdata]
name = InfluxData Repository - Stable
baseurl = https://repos.influxdata.com/stable/$basearch/main
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-influxdata
EOF

  2. Enter the following command to install telegraf from the repository.

    sudo yum install telegraf

The telegraf configuration file is installed at /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf.

The openSUSE Build Service provides RPM packages for SUSE Linux.

To use the zypper package manager to install the latest stable version of Telegraf, follow these steps:

  1. In your terminal, enter the following command to add the Go repository to the zypper configuration:

    # add go repository
zypper ar -f obs://devel:languages:go/ go

  2. Enter the following command to install telegraf.

    # install latest telegraf
zypper in telegraf

Telegraf is part of the FreeBSD package system.

To use the pkg package manager to install the latest stable version of Telegraf, enter the following command:

sudo pkg install telegraf

The telegraf configuration file is installed at /usr/local/etc/telegraf.conf. Examples are installed at /usr/local/etc/telegraf.conf.sample.

Choose from the following options to install Telegraf binary files for Linux AMD:

Download and install on Linux AMD64

curl -s --location -O \
https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.32.3_linux_amd64.tar.gz \
&& echo "
260bc3170dbd6cce67575c1215a0b89b8447945106e2943d74e617d06b750c03
  telegraf-1.32.3_linux_amd64.tar.gz" \
| sha256sum -c -

Replace the following:

  • 260bc3170dbd6cce67575c1215a0b89b8447945106e2943d74e617d06b750c03: the SHA checksum from the downloads page

Choose from the following options to install Telegraf binary files for Linux ARM:

Download and install on Linux ARMv8

curl -s --location -O \
https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.32.3_linux_arm64.tar.gz \
&& echo "
f0d8ccae539afa04b171d5268dbab21eef58bc51b5437689e347619e2097c824
  telegraf-1.32.3_linux_arm64.tar.gz" \
| sha256sum -c -

Replace the following:

  • f0d8ccae539afa04b171d5268dbab21eef58bc51b5437689e347619e2097c824: the SHA checksum from the downloads page

Choose from the following options to install Telegraf for macOS:

Install using Homebrew

Users of macOS 10.8 and higher can install Telegraf using the Homebrew package manager.

The telegraf binary installed by Homebrew differs from the macOS .dmg builds available from the downloads page.

  • telegraf (Homebrew) isn’t a static binary.
  • telegraf (Homebrew) works with the Telegraf CPU plugin (due to Homebrew support for Cgo). The .dmg builds available on the downloads page don’t support the CPU plugin.

To install using Homebrew, do the following:

  1. If you haven’t already, follow the instructions to install the Homebrew package manager.

  2. Enter the following commands to update brew and install Telegraf:

    brew update && brew install telegraf

    The path where brew installs the telegraf.conf configuration file depends on your system architecture:

    • ARM-based (Apple Silicon) systems: /opt/homebrew/etc/telegraf.conf
    • Intel-based (x86_64) systems: /usr/local/etc/telegraf.conf

  3. Choose one of the following methods to start Telegraf and begin collecting and processing metrics:

Run Telegraf in your terminal

To run telegraf in your terminal (in the foreground and not as a service), enter the following command:

ARM (Apple Silicon) x86_64 (Intel)

telegraf -config /opt/homebrew/etc/telegraf.conf

telegraf -config /usr/local/etc/telegraf.conf

Run Telegraf as a background service

In your terminal, enter the following command to add telegraf to your system’s LaunchAgents:

ARM (Apple Silicon) x86_64 (Intel)

ln -sfv /opt/homebrew/opt/telegraf/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents

ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/telegraf/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents

The next time you login, launchd starts the telegraf service.

To immediately start the telegraf service, enter the following command:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.telegraf.plist

Download and run Telegraf as a Windows service

Installing a Windows service requires administrative permissions. To run PowerShell as an administrator, see Launch PowerShell as administrator.

In PowerShell as an administrator, do the following:

  1. Use the following commands to download the Telegraf Windows binary and extract its contents to C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\:

    wget `
https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.32.3_windows_amd64.zip `
-UseBasicParsing `
-OutFile telegraf-1.32.3_windows_amd64.zip
Expand-Archive .\telegraf-1.32.3_windows_amd64.zip `
-DestinationPath 'C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\'

  2. Choose one of the following steps to place your telegraf.exe and telegraf.conf files in C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf:

    • Move the telegraf.exe and telegraf.conf files from C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\telegraf-1.32.3 to the parent directory C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf–for example:

      cd "C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf";
mv .\telegraf-1.32.3\telegraf.* .

    • Or, create a Windows symbolic link (Symlink) for C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf that points to the extracted directory.

The remaining instructions assume that telegraf.exe and telegraf.conf files are stored in C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf or that you created a Symlink to point to this directory.

  1. Optional: Enable a plugin to collect Windows-specific metrics–for example, uncomment the inputs.win_services plugin configuration line:

    ...
# # Input plugin to report Windows services info.
# # This plugin ONLY supports Windows
[[inputs.win_services]]
...

  2. Run the following command to install Telegraf and the configuration as a Windows service. For the --config option, pass the absolute path of the telegraf.conf configuration file.

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

  3. To test that the installation works, enter the following command:

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

    When run in test mode (using the --test flag), Telegraf runs once, collects metrics, outputs them to the console, and then exits. It doesn’t run processors, aggregators, or output plugins.

  4. To start collecting data, run:

    .\telegraf.exe --service start

Logging and troubleshooting

When Telegraf runs as a Windows service, Telegraf logs messages to Windows event logs. If the Telegraf service fails to start, view error logs by selecting Event Viewer→Windows Logs→Application.

Windows service commands

The following commands are available:

Command Effect
telegraf.exe --service install Install telegraf as a service
telegraf.exe --service uninstall Remove the telegraf service
telegraf.exe --service start Start the telegraf service
telegraf.exe --service stop Stop the telegraf service

Generate a configuration file

The telegraf config command lets you generate a configuration file from Telegraf’s plugin list.

Create a configuration file with default input and output plugins

To generate a configuration file with default input and output plugins enabled, enter the following command in your terminal:

Linux and macOS Windows

telegraf config > telegraf.conf

.\telegraf.exe config > telegraf.conf

Create a configuration file with specific input and output plugins

To generate a configuration file that contains settings for only specific plugins, use the --input-filter and --output-filter options to specify input plugins and output plugins–for example:

Linux and macOS Windows

telegraf \
--input-filter 
cpu
:
http
 \
--output-filter 
influxdb_v2
:
file
 \
config > telegraf.conf

.\telegraf.exe `
--input-filter 
cpu
:
http
 `
--output-filter 
influxdb_v2
:
file
 `
config > telegraf.conf

For more advanced configuration details, see the configuration documentation.

Custom-compile Telegraf

Use the Telegraf custom builder tool to compile Telegraf with only the plugins you need and reduce the Telegraf binary size.

  1. Prerequisites
  2. Build the custom builder tool
  3. Run the custom builder to create a telegraf binary

Prerequisites

Build the custom builder tool

  1. Clone the Telegraf repository and then change into the repository directory–for example, enter the following command in your terminal:

    git clone https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf.git && cd ./telegraf

  2. To build the Telegraf custom builder tool, enter the following command:

    make build_tools

Run the custom builder to create a telegraf binary

The custom builder builds a telegraf binary with only the plugins included in the specified configuration files or directories.

Run the custom_builder tool with at least one --config or --config-directory flag to specify Telegraf configuration files to build from.

  • --config: accepts local file paths and URLs.
  • --config-dir: accepts local directory paths.

You can include multiple --config and --config-dir flags.

Examples

Single Telegraf configuration
./tools/custom_builder/custom_builder --config /etc/telegraf.conf
Single Telegraf configuration and Telegraf configuration directory
./tools/custom_builder/custom_builder \
--config /etc/telegraf.conf \
--config-dir /etc/telegraf/telegraf.d
Remote Telegraf configuration
./tools/custom_builder/custom_builder \
--config http://url-to-remote-telegraf/telegraf.conf

After a successful build, you can view your customized telegraf binary within the top level of your Telegraf repository.

Update your custom binary

To add or remove plugins from your customized Telegraf build, edit your configuration file, and then run the custom builder to regenerate the Telegraf binary.

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