Introduction
Grafana is an open source, enterprise-level monitoring system that is supported by Graphite, Prometheus, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, and other databases. With this tool, it’s easy to create your dashboard to manage apps or for the purpose of monitoring infrastructure performance.
In this article, we will take you through the Installation process of Grafana on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, you will need the following:
- A virtual machine running on Ubuntu 18.04 server
- A non-root user with sudo privileges
If everything is set, then let’s start the installation process.
Step 1- Installing Grafana
Grafana is not available in Ubuntu’s default repository. Therefore, to get started, you must add grafana repository to Ubuntu 18.04 system.
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
This will a file with detailed content. Now copy the line below and paste it after the last line of the file’s content.
deb https://packagecloud.io/grafana/stable/debian/ stretch main
Now, save and exit the file.
Next, execute the command below to download the GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) key.
$ sudo curl https://packagecloud.io/gpg.key
The key, will be downloaded automatically, but you need to execute the command below to install it.
$ sudo apt-key add -
The next step is to perform an update on Grafana repository, then install the application using the command below:
$ sudo apt-get update -y $ sudo apt-get install grafana -y
After the installation process is complete, you will get an output similar to the one below:
Preparing to unpack .../grafana_5.1.3_amd64.deb ... Unpacking grafana (5.1.3) ... Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ... Processing triggers for systemd (237-3ubuntu10) ... Setting up grafana (5.1.3) ... Adding system user `grafana' (UID 112) ... Adding new user `grafana' (UID 112) with group `grafana' ... Not creating home directory `/usr/share/grafana'. ### NOT starting on installation, please execute the following statements to configure grafana to start automatically using systemd sudo /bin/systemctl daemon-reload sudo /bin/systemctl enable grafana-server ### You can start grafana-server by executing sudo /bin/systemctl start grafana-server Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ... Processing triggers for systemd (237-3ubuntu10) ...
Now, execute the commands below to start Grafana and enable it so that it starts on boot time:
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload $ sudo systemctl enable grafana-server $ sudo systemctl start grafana-server
Go ahead and check Grafana status:
$ sudo systemctl status grafana-server
The output should look like this:
? grafana-server.service - Grafana instance Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/grafana-server.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-06-13 15:43:13 UTC; 11s ago Docs: http://docs.grafana.org Main PID: 19946 (grafana-server) Tasks: 8 (limit: 1114) CGroup: /system.slice/grafana-server.service ??19946 /usr/sbin/grafana-server --config=/etc/grafana/grafana.ini --pidfile=/var/run/grafana/grafana-server.pid cfg:default.paths.l Jun 13 15:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Executing migration" logger=migrator id="createuser Jun 1315:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Executing migration" logger=migrator id="create inde Jun 13 15:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Executing migration" logger=migrator id="alter user_ Jun 1315:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Created default admin user: admin" Jun 1315:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Starting plugin search" logger=plugins Jun 1315:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Plugin dir created" logger=plugins dir=/var/lib/graf Jun 1315:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Initializing Alerting" logger=alerting.engine Jun 1315:43:19 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:19+0000 lvl=info msg="Initializing CleanUpService" logger=cleanup Jun 1315:43:20 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:20+0000 lvl=info msg="Initializing Stream Manager" Jun 1315:43:20 ubuntu1804 grafana-server[19946]: t=2018-06-13T15:43:20+0000 lvl=info msg="Initializing HTTP Server" logger=http.server address lines1-19/19 (END)
Once you get this, now try to access Grafana.
Step 2 - Accessing Grafana
Now that Grafana is fully installed and successfully configured, try to access its dashboard.
To do so, go to your browser and enter the address http://your-server-ip:3000. You should be directed to a new page that looks like the one below:
Enter your admin credentials (username and password) for Grafana, in this case, use “admin” on both cases, then press the Log In. The Grafana dashboard should appear as shown below:
Now, everything is set and you have successfully installed Grafana monitoring tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Conclusion
Congratulations! Grafana is now up and running and set to update you on what is happening with the systems and servers in your data center.
This monitoring system eliminates the guesswork on the actual activities taking place in your Linux machines as well as the services they offer. We hope it will be worth your time.
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