Install By Deb

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.

Please refer to the resources below for further steps.

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.

Last updated