This article explains how to install the td-agent deb 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, some 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 deb 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 Apt Repository

For Ubuntu, we currently support "Ubuntu 18.04 LTS / Bionic 64bit", "Ubuntu 16.04 LTS / Xenial 64bit", "Ubuntu 14.04 LTS / Trusty 64bit/32bit", "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS / Precise 64bit/32bit", "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS / Lucid 64bit/32bit".

For Debian, we currently support Jessie, Wheezy and Squeeze. There is no 32bit packages for Debian. We might not provide td-agent for older distributions. For example, we don't provide latest td-agent version for squeeze and lucid for now.

A shell script is provided to automate the installation process for each version. The shell script registers a new apt repository at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/treasure-data.list and installs the td-agent deb package.

For Bionic,

curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-ubuntu-bionic-td-agent2.5.sh | sh

For Xenial,

# td-agent 2.5 or later
curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-ubuntu-xenial-td-agent2.5.sh | sh
# td-agent 2.3 or earlier
curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-ubuntu-xenial-td-agent2.sh | sh

For Trusty,

# td-agent 2.5 or later
curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-ubuntu-trusty-td-agent2.5.sh | sh
# td-agent 2.3 or earlier
curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-ubuntu-trusty-td-agent2.sh | sh

For Precise,

curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-ubuntu-precise-td-agent2.sh | sh

For Lucid,

curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-ubuntu-lucid-td-agent2.sh | sh

For Debian Stretch,

curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-debian-stretch-td-agent2.sh | sh

For Debian Jessie,

curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-debian-jessie-td-agent2.sh | sh

For Debian Wheezy,

curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-debian-wheezy-td-agent2.sh | sh

For Debian Squeeze,

curl -L https://toolbelt.treasuredata.com/sh/install-debian-squeeze-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.

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 restart
$ 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.