fluent-package v5 vs td-agent v4

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 Fluentd Project provides the stable distribution of Fluentd, called fluent-package (formerly known as td-agent). The differences between Fluentd and fluent-package can be found here.

This article explains the difference between fluent-package v5 and td-agent v4.

The series of td-agent had already reached End of Life (EOL). td-agent should not be newly installed because of no support, no new release and no security updates anymore. Use fluent-package instead!

Supported Platforms

Platform	v4(x86_64)	v4(Arm64)	v5(x86_64)	v5(Arm64)
RedHat/CentOS 7	✔	✔	- (*1)	- (*1)
RedHat/CentOS 8	✔	✔	✔	✔
RedHat/CentOS 9	✔	✔	✔	✔
Amazon Linux 2	✔	✔	✔	✔
Amazon Linux 2023	-	-	✔	✔
Ubuntu Focal	✔	✔	✔	✔
Ubuntu Jammy	✔	✔	✔	✔
Ubuntu Noble	-	-	✔	✔
Debian Buster	✔	✔	-	-
Debian Bullseye	✔	✔	✔	✔
Debian Bookworm	-	-	✔	✔
macOS	✔	-	-	-
Windows	✔	-	✔	-

*1: Since v5.0.4, RHEL 7 / CentOS 7 is not supported anymore because CentOS 7 has reached EOL (June, 2024).

Features

fluent-package v5

New stable. Major feature updates to fluent-package v5 are as follows:

• Ruby 3.2

• Fluentd v1.16.2 ~

• Added support for Amazon Linux 2023

• Added support for Debian Bookworm

• Added support for Ubuntu Noble (since v5.0.4)

• Shipped through 2 channels. See Scheduled support lifecycle announcement about Fluent Package for details.

  • Normal release

  • Long Term Support (LTS)

• Added new features:

  • Zero-downtime restart / update

    • fluent-package v5.2.0 has been released
    • Zero-downtime restart
• Fixed some serious bugs:

  • Fixed in_tail wrongly stopping tailing the current target file and causing handle leaks

    • See Fluentd v1.16.3 and v1.16.2 have been released for details.
  • Fixed emit error when handling large data exceeding chunk size limit

    • See Fluentd v1.16.4 has been released for details.
• Many other improvements and fixes:

  • Fluent Package v5 CHANGELOG
  • Fluentd CHANGELOG

See also Changes from Treasure Agent 4

td-agent v4

Old stable. Major feature updates to td-agent v4 are as follows:

• Ruby 2.7

• Fluentd v1

• Arm64 Support

See also Changes from Treasure Agent 3

Conclusion: Use fluent-package v5 instead of td-agent v4

Please use fluent-package v5 instead of td-agent v4 because:

• fluent-package is the successor to td-agent and keeps backward compatibility.

• The series of td-agent had already reached End of Life (EOL).

• Some of the components embedded into td-agent, including Ruby, had already reached EOL.

• td-agent v4 has several known bugs, such as the in_tail bug.
• fluent-package provides the Long Term Support (LTS) channel, making subsequent updates easier.

How to install fluent-package:

• Ubuntu/Debian
• RedHat/CentOS
• Windows
• RubyGems

How to upgrade to fluent-package:

• Upgrade to fluent-package v5.

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 under the Apache License 2.0.