Metricbeat and systemd

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The DEB and RPM packages include a service unit for Linux systems with systemd. On these systems, you can manage Metricbeat by using the usual systemd commands.

Start and stop Metricbeat

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Use systemctl to start or stop Metricbeat:

sudo systemctl start metricbeat
sudo systemctl stop metricbeat

By default, the Metricbeat service starts automatically when the system boots. To enable or disable auto start use:

sudo systemctl enable metricbeat
sudo systemctl disable metricbeat

Metricbeat status and logs

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To get the service status, use systemctl:

systemctl status metricbeat

Logs are stored by default in journald. To view the Logs, use journalctl:

journalctl -u metricbeat.service

Customize systemd unit for Metricbeat

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The systemd service unit file includes environment variables that you can override to change the default options.

Variable Description Default value

BEAT_LOG_OPTS

Log options

BEAT_CONFIG_OPTS

Flags for configuration file path

-c /etc/metricbeat/metricbeat.yml

BEAT_PATH_OPTS

Other paths

-path.home /usr/share/metricbeat -path.config /etc/metricbeat -path.data /var/lib/metricbeat -path.logs /var/log/metricbeat

You can use BEAT_LOG_OPTS to set debug selectors for logging. However, to configure logging behavior, set the logging options described in Configure logging.

To override these variables, create a drop-in unit file in the /etc/systemd/system/metricbeat.service.d directory.

For example a file with the following content placed in /etc/systemd/system/metricbeat.service.d/debug.conf would override BEAT_LOG_OPTS to enable debug for Elasticsearch output.

[Service]
Environment="BEAT_LOG_OPTS=-d elasticsearch"

To apply your changes, reload the systemd configuration and restart the service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart metricbeat

It is recommended that you use a configuration management tool to include drop-in unit files. If you need to add a drop-in manually, use systemctl edit metricbeat.service.