Install By Rpm

This article explains how to install the td-agent rpm package, the stable Fluentd distribution package maintained by Treasure Data, Inc.

What is td-agent?

Fluentd is written in Ruby for flexibility, with performance sensitive parts written in C. However, casual users may have difficulty installing and operating a Ruby daemon.

That's why Treasure Data, Inc is providing the stable community distribution of Fluentd, called td-agent. The differences between Fluentd and td-agent can be found here.

Currently, td-agent 2 rpm has two versions, td-agent 2.5 / td-agent 2.3. The different point is bundled ruby version. td-agent 2.5 or later uses ruby 2.5 and td-agent 2.3 or earlier uses ruby 2.1. ruby 2.1 is EOL so we recommend to use td-agent 2.5 for new deployment. td-agent 2.5 and td-agent 2.3 use fluentd v0.12 serise so the behaviour is same.

Step 0: Before Installation

Please follow the Preinstallation Guide to configure your OS properly. This will prevent many unnecessary problems.

Step 1: Install from rpm Repository

CentOS and RHEL 5, 6, 7 and Amazon Linux are currently supported.

Executing install-redhat-td-agent2.sh will automatically install td-agent on your machine. This shell script registers a new rpm repository at /etc/yum.repos.d/td.repo and installs the td-agent rpm package.

# td-agent 2.5 or later. Only CentOS/RHEL 6 and 7 for now.
$ curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-redhat-td-agent2.5.sh | sh
# td-agent 2.3 or earlier
$ curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-redhat-td-agent2.sh | sh

It's HIGHLY recommended that you set up ntpd on the node to prevent invalid timestamps in your logs. Please check the Preinstallation Guide. td-agent supports recent 2 Amazon Linux versions. It means if the latest version is 2016.09, we provides new packages for 2016.03 and 2016.09. No new packages for 2015.09 or earlier.

Step2: Launch Daemon

The /etc/init.d/td-agent script is provided to start, stop, or restart the agent.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/td-agent start
Starting td-agent: [  OK  ]
$ sudo /etc/init.d/td-agent status
td-agent (pid  21678) is running...

The following commands are supported:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/td-agent start
$ sudo /etc/init.d/td-agent stop
$ sudo /etc/init.d/td-agent restart
$ sudo /etc/init.d/td-agent status

Please make sure your configuration file is located at /etc/td-agent/td-agent.conf.

Step3: Post Sample Logs via HTTP

By default, /etc/td-agent/td-agent.conf is configured to take logs from HTTP and route them to stdout (/var/log/td-agent/td-agent.log). You can post sample log records using the curl command.

$ curl -X POST -d 'json={"json":"message"}' http://localhost:8888/debug.test

Next Steps

You're now ready to collect your real logs using Fluentd. Please see the following tutorials to learn how to collect your data from various data sources.

• Basic Configuration

  • Config File
• Application Logs

  • Ruby, Java, Python, PHP,

    Perl, Node.js, Scala
• Examples

  • Store Apache Log into Amazon S3
  • Store Apache Log into MongoDB
  • Data Collection into HDFS

Please refer to the resources below for further steps.

• ChangeLog of td-agent
• Chef Cookbook

If this article is incorrect or outdated, or omits critical information, please let us know. Fluentd is a open source project under Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). All components are available under the Apache 2 License.