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 in C. However, some users may have difficulty installing and operating a Ruby daemon.

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

This installation guide is for td-agent v3/v4. td-agent v3/v4 uses fluentd v1 in the core. See this page for the comparison and supported OS.

Step 0: Before Installation

Please follow the Pre-installation Guide to configure your OS properly.

Step 1: Install from rpm Repository

It is highly recommended to set up ntpd on the node to prevent invalid timestamps in the logs. See Pre-installation Guide.

NOTE: If your OS is not supported, consider gem installation instead.

Red Hat / CentOS

Download and execute the install script with curl:

# td-agent 4
$ curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-redhat-td-agent4.sh | sh
​
# td-agent 3
$ curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-redhat-td-agent3.sh | sh

Executing this script 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 td-agent.

We use $releasever for repository path in the script and $releasever should be the major version only like "7". If your environment uses some other format like "7.2", change it to the major version only or set up TD repository manually.

Amazon Linux

For Amazon Linux 2:

# td-agent 4
$ curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-amazon2-td-agent4.sh | sh
​
# td-agent 3
$ curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-amazon2-td-agent3.sh | sh

Step 2: Launch Daemon

td-agent provides two (2) scripts:

systemd

Use /usr/lib/systemd/system/td-agent script to start, stop, or restart the agent:

$ sudo systemctl start td-agent.service
$ sudo systemctl status td-agent.service
● td-agent.service - td-agent: Fluentd based data collector for Treasure Data
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/td-agent.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2017-12-07 15:12:27 PST; 6min ago
     Docs: https://docs.treasuredata.com/articles/td-agent
  Process: 53192 ExecStart = /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin/fluentd --log /var/log/td-agent/td-agent.log --daemon /var/run/td-agent/td-agent.pid (code = exited, statu
 Main PID: 53198 (fluentd)
   CGroup: /system.slice/td-agent.service
           ├─53198 /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin/ruby /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin/fluentd --log /var/log/td-agent/td-agent.log --daemon /var/run/td-agent/td-agent
           └─53203 /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin/ruby -Eascii-8bit:ascii-8bit /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin/fluentd --log /var/log/td-agent/td-agent.log --daemon /v
​
Dec 07 15:12:27 ubuntu systemd[1]: Starting td-agent: Fluentd based data collector for Treasure Data...
Dec 07 15:12:27 ubuntu systemd[1]: Started td-agent: Fluentd based data collector for Treasure Data.

To customize systemd behavior, put your td-agent.service in /etc/systemd/system.

NOTE: In td-agent 4, the path is different i.e. /opt/td-agent/bin instead of /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin.

init.d

This is for CentOS 6, non systemd based system.

Use /etc/init.d/td-agent script 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 path is:

/etc/td-agent/td-agent.conf

Step 3: Post Sample Logs via HTTP

The default configuration (/etc/td-agent/td-agent.conf) is to receive logs at an HTTP endpoint and route them to stdout. For td-agent logs, see /var/log/td-agent/td-agent.log.

You can post sample log records with curl command:

$ curl -X POST -d 'json={"json":"message"}' http://localhost:8888/debug.test
$ tail -n 1 /var/log/td-agent/td-agent.log
2018-01-01 17:51:47 -0700 debug.test: {"json":"message"}

Next Steps

You are now ready to collect real logs with Fluentd. Refer to the following tutorials on how to collect data from various 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​

For further steps, follow these:

• ​ChangeLog of td-agent​

• ​Chef Cookbook​

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