Grafana 5.4

This documentation page describes the process of installation and configuration of Grafana using CentOS 7 as the base Operating System.

Directory Hierarchy

Description Path
Installs binary /usr/sbin/grafana-server
init.d script /etc/init.d/grafana-server
Default Configuration /etc/sysconfig/grafana-server
Configuration file /etc/grafana/grafana.ini
Default Log file /var/log/grafana/grafana.log
Database definition /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db
Systemd Service definition /usr/lib/systemd/system/grafana-server.service

Note

Default configuration specifies an sqlite3 database.

Note

The installation creates the grafana-server service in /usr/lib/systemd only if systemd is available. [1]

Basic information

  • Deploy date: 11th February, 2019
  • Official Website: https://grafana.com
  • License: Apache License 2.0

Concepts

  • Example: ABC.

Installation

  1. Download the Official RPM:

    $ wget https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana-5.4.3-1.x86_64.rpm.

  2. Install the downloaded RPM:

    $ yum install grafana-5.4.3-1.x86_64.rpm

Configuration

HTTP Configuration

Instead of running Grafana Server directly in the port 80, it can be provided through port 80 or 443 using a Web server or a reverse proxy.

The procedure to configure it with apache is:

  1. Define the Location configuration that will stablish a reverse proxy to redirect HTTP requests from port 80 to local port 3000 (default port for Grafana) in a valid configuration directory (i.e /etc/httpd/conf.d/grafana.conf)
<Location "/grafana">
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  ProxyPass http://10.10.10.10:3000
  ProxyPassReverse http://10.10.10.10:3000
</Location>

  1. Enable Apache to redirect Grafana App port

    $ setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

  2. Enable Grafana Service to start in boot time

    $ systemctl enable grafana-server

Troubleshooting

If you’re seeing this Grafana has failed to load its application files

Configuration Error

PROBLEM 2: Using a web server (i.e Apache) to provide the grafana web interface through a public IP generates an incorrect redirection with the default values present in grafana.ini.

SOLUTION: Edit the variable root_url in /etc/grafana/grafana.ini as follows:

root_url = %(protocol)s://%(domain)s:%(http_port)s/grafana

Restart grafana-server to refresh the configuration:

$ systemctl grafana-server restart

Basic Authentication Failed

PROBLEM: The Login process fails in Grafana Webpage displaying the following JSON:

{"message":"Basic auth failed"}

SOLUTION: Disable Basic Authentication in /etc/grafana/grafana.ini:

[auth.basic]
enabled = false

Restart grafana-server to refresh the configuration:

$ systemctl grafana-server restart

Cannot Bind to Port

PROBLEM: The variable http_port is set with a reserved port (lower than 1024) but grafana-server cannot start correctly.

Warning

It’s not recommended to run Grafana in a reserved port. Instead use a Reverse Proxy or a web server (Apache, Nginx).

SOLUTION: Grafana Server is a service that runs as grafana user, it’s neccesary to add it the linux capability to bind to reserved ports running with a non-root user.

Starting with kernel 2.2, Linux divides the privileges traditionally associated with superuser into distinct units, known as capabilities, which can be independently enabled and disabled. Capabilities are a per-thread attribute. [2]

Execute:

$ setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/sbin/grafana-server

Authors

References

[1]Grafana Labs. (n.d.). Installing on RPM-based Linux. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from http://docs.grafana.org/installation/rpm/
[2]Kerrisk, M. (2019, May 11). Capabilities Manual. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html