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Start the Grafana server

This topic includes instructions for starting the Grafana server. For certain configuration changes, you might have to restart the Grafana server for them to take effect.

The following instructions start the grafana-server process as the grafana user, which was created during the package installation.

If you installed with the APT repository or .deb package, then you can start the server using systemd or init.d. If you installed a binary .tar.gz file, then you execute the binary.

Linux

The following subsections describe three methods of starting and restarting the Grafana server: with systemd, initd, or by directly running the binary. You should follow only one set of instructions, depending on how your machine is configured.

Start the Grafana server with systemd

Complete the following steps to start the Grafana server using systemd and verify that it is running:

  1. To start the service, run the following commands:

    bash 
    sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start grafana-server
sudo systemctl status grafana-server

  2. To verify that the service is running, run the following command:

    sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Configure the Grafana server to start at boot using systemd

To configure the Grafana server to start at boot, run the following command:

bash 
sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service

Serve Grafana on a port < 1024

If you are using systemd and want to start Grafana on a port that is lower than 1024, you must add a systemd unit override.

  1. Run the following command to create an override file in your configured editor.

    bash 
    # Alternatively, create a file in /etc/systemd/system/grafana-server.service.d/override.conf
systemctl edit grafana-server.service

  2. Add the following additional settings to grant the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability.

    To learn more about capabilities, refer to capabilities(7) — Linux manual page.

    [Service]
# Give the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability
CapabilityBoundingSet=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE

# A private user cannot have process capabilities on the host's user
# namespace and thus CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE has no effect.
PrivateUsers=false

Restart the Grafana server using systemd

To restart the Grafana server, run the following commands:

bash 
sudo systemctl restart grafana-server

Note: SUSE or openSUSE users might need to start the server with the systemd method, then use the init.d method to configure Grafana to start at boot.

Start the Grafana server using init.d

Complete the following steps to start the Grafana server using init.d and verify that it is running:

  1. To start the Grafana server, run the following commands:

    bash 
    sudo service grafana-server start
sudo service grafana-server status

  2. To verify that the service is running, run the following command:

    sudo service grafana-server status

Configure the Grafana server to start at boot using init.d

To configure the Grafana server to start at boot, run the following command:

bash 
sudo update-rc.d grafana-server defaults

Restart the Grafana server using init.d

To restart the Grafana server, run the following commands:

bash 
sudo service grafana-server restart

Start the server using the binary

The grafana-server binary .tar.gz needs the working directory to be the root install directory where the binary and the public folder are located.

To start the Grafana server, run the following command:

bash 
./bin/grafana-server

Docker

To restart the Grafana service, use the docker restart command.

docker restart grafana

Alternately, you can use the docker compose restart command to restart Grafana. For more information, refer to docker compose documentation.

Docker compose example

Configure your docker-compose.yml file. For example:

bash 
grafana:
  image: grafana/grafana:latest
  ports:
    - "3000:3000"
  environment:
    - TERM=linux
    - GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-clock-panel,grafana-piechart-panel,grafana-polystat-panel

Start the Grafana server:

docker-compose up

This starts the Grafana server along with the three plugins specified in the YAML file.

To restart the running container, use this command:

docker-compose restart grafana

Windows

Complete the following steps to start the Grafana server on Windows:

  1. Execute grafana-server.exe, which is located in the bin directory.

    We recommend that you run grafana-server.exe from the command line.

    If you want to run Grafana as a Windows service, you can download NSSM.

  2. To run Grafana, open your browser and go to the Grafana port (http://localhost:3000/ is default).

    Note: The default Grafana port is 3000. This port might require extra permissions on Windows. If it does not appear in the default port, you can try changing to a different port.

  3. If you need to change the port, complete the following steps:

    a. In the conf directory, copy sample.ini to custom.ini.

    Note: You should edit custom.ini, never defaults.ini.

    b. Edit custom.ini and uncomment the http_port configuration option (; is the comment character in ini files) and change it to something similar to 8080, which should not require extra Windows privileges.

To restart the Grafana server, complete the following steps:

  1. Open the Services app.
  2. Right-click on the Grafana service.
  3. In the context menu, click Restart.

macOS

Restart methods differ depending on whether you installed Grafana using Homebrew or as standalone macOS binaries.

Restart Grafana using Homebrew

Use the Homebrew restart command:

bash 
brew services restart grafana

Restart standalone macOS binaries

To restart Grafana:

  1. Open a terminal and go to the directory where you copied the install setup files.
  2. Run the command:
bash 
./bin/grafana-server

Next steps

After the Grafana server is up and running, consider taking the next steps:

  • Refer to Get Started to learn how to build your first dashboard.
  • Refer to Configuration to learn about how you can customize your environment.