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Access or install Explore Logs

To use Explore Logs on your own data, you can either access it in Grafana Cloud or install it in your own Grafana instance.

Give it a try using Grafana Play
Give it a try using Grafana Play

With Grafana Play, you can explore and see how it works, learning from practical examples to accelerate your development. This feature can be seen on the Grafana Play site.

Access in Grafana Cloud

To access Explore Logs:

  1. Open your Grafana stack in a web browser.
  2. In the main menu, select Explore > Logs.

Installation

If you are not using Grafana Cloud, you can install Explore Logs in your Grafana environment.

Install via Plugins catalog

For Enterprise and OSS Grafana users, you can install Explore Logs via the Grafana Plugins catalog.

  1. Open https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/grafana-lokiexplore-app/ in a web browser
  2. Open the Installation tab.
  3. Follow the instructions to install the app.

Install in Loki

The following Loki and Grafana version and configuration are required:

  • Grafana v11.2.0 or later

  • Loki v3.2.0 or later

    • Enable pattern ingestion by setting pattern-ingester.enabled to truein your Loki configuration file.

    • Enable structured metadata by setting allow_structured_metadata to true within your Loki config file.

    • Enable the volume endpoint by setting volume_enabled to true within your Loki config file.

      yaml
      pattern_ingester:
        enabled: true
      limits_config:
        allow_structured_metadata: true
        volume_enabled: true

Install via environment variable

If you want to install the app in a docker container, you need to configure the following environment variable:

sh
GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=https://storage.googleapis.com/integration-artifacts/grafana-lokiexplore-app/grafana-lokiexplore-app-latest.zip;grafana-lokiexplore-app

Install using grafana-cli

You can install Explore Logs in your own Grafana instance using grafana-cli. For more information about grafana-cli refer to the documentation

Using grafana-cli run the following command:

sh
grafana-cli --pluginUrl=https://storage.googleapis.com/integration-artifacts/grafana-lokiexplore-app/grafana-lokiexplore-app-latest.zip plugins install grafana-lokiexplore-app

Test with Docker Compose

You can test the app using the following command to spin up Grafana, Loki, and the Explore Logs App:

sh
curl -L https://github.com/grafana/explore-logs/raw/main/scripts/run.sh | sh

This will download the run.sh file and execute it.

That shell file will download some configuration files into your /tmp/explore-logs directory and start the docker containers via docker compose from there.

Once the docker container has started, navigate to http://localhost:3000/a/grafana-lokiexplore-app/explore to access Explore Logs.

Having trouble?

Refer to the troubleshooting guide for tips on how to solve common issues.

What next?

Before you can use Explore Logs, an administrator must configure a Loki data source in order to access your logs in Explore Logs. Refer to the Loki data source documentation for instructions.