Installing on Debian / Ubuntu

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

Install Stable

wget <debian package url>
sudo apt-get install -y adduser libfontconfig1
sudo dpkg -i grafana_<version>_amd64.deb

Example:

wget https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana_5.4.2_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install -y adduser libfontconfig1
sudo dpkg -i grafana_5.4.2_amd64.deb

APT Repository

The command add-apt-repository isn’t a default app on Debian 9 and requires

apt-get install -y software-properties-common

Install the repository for stable releases

sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main"

There is a separate repository if you want beta releases.

sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb beta main"

Use the above line even if you are on Ubuntu or another Debian version. Then add our gpg key. This allows you to install signed packages.

sudo wget -q -O - https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | apt-key add -

Update your Apt repositories and install Grafana

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.

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:

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.

Default login and password admin/ admin

To configure the Grafana server to start at boot time:

sudo update-rc.d grafana-server defaults

Start the server (via systemd)

To start the service using systemd:

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

Enable the systemd service so that Grafana starts at boot.

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

• Graphite
• InfluxDB
• OpenTSDB
• Prometheus

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).

Logging in for the first time

To run Grafana open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000/. 3000 is the default http port that Grafana listens to if you haven’t configured a different port. Then follow the instructions here.