How to install Netdata Monitoring Tool

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Since I discovered Netdata I knew that is the perfect tool to see some real-time metrics, especially when I need to do some quick investigations related to my app and hardware health.

Official website: https://www.netdata.cloud/

Installation

Netdata offers many ways to install it. You can check their documentation: https://learn.netdata.cloud/docs/agent/packaging/installer

What I love the most is the one-line installation method, a short sh script which is doing everything while you enjoy your coffee. Log into your machine as root or as a user with sudo privileges and type the next command:

bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh) --no-updates --stable-channel --disable-telemetry

During installation, you will be asked to type Enter, after which the service will be available. As you can see I passed some parameters to the script:

  • –no-updates, because i don’t want automatic updates
  • –stable-channel, because i want the stable channel
  • –disable-telemetry, because i don’t want to send anonymous statistics

Files generated by Netdata:

  • the daemon at /usr/sbin/netdata
  • config files in /etc/netdata
  • web files in /usr/share/netdata
  • plugins in /usr/libexec/netdata
  • cache files in /var/cache/netdata
  • db files in /var/lib/netdata
  • log files in /var/log/netdata
  • pid file at /var/run/netdata.pid
  • logrotate file at /etc/logrotate.d/netdata

After the script finishes to run, check the netdata service:

catalin@devops:~$ sudo systemctl status netdata
● netdata.service - Real time performance monitoring
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/netdata.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2020-05-03 16:38:35 UTC; 30s ago
  Process: 21470 ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p /var/cache/netdata (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 21471 ExecStartPre=/bin/chown -R netdata:netdata /var/cache/netdata (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 21472 ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p /var/run/netdata (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 21473 ExecStartPre=/bin/chown -R netdata:netdata /var/run/netdata (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 21474 (netdata)
    Tasks: 31 (limit: 9508)
   Memory: 59.3M
   CGroup: /system.slice/netdata.service
           ├─21474 /usr/sbin/netdata -P /var/run/netdata/netdata.pid -D
           ├─21608 bash /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/tc-qos-helper.sh 1
           ├─21610 /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/apps.plugin 1
           ├─21611 /usr/bin/python /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/python.d.plugin 1
           └─21612 /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/go.d.plugin 1

May 03 16:38:35 devops systemd[1]: Starting Real time performance monitoring...
May 03 16:38:35 devops systemd[1]: Started Real time performance monitoring.
May 03 16:38:35 devops netdata[21474]: SIGNAL: Not enabling reaper
May 03 16:38:35 devops netdata[21474]: 2020-05-03 16:38:35: netdata INFO  : MAIN : SIGNAL: Not enabling reaper

Check your browser for the dashboard:

http://server_ip:19999

Some netdata facts:

  • default, data retention is for 1 h; you can increase by changing history in /etc/netdata.conf but not longer than 1 day
  • depending on how much metrics you have and history, it can consume more memory
  • for some software you need configs to collect metric; apache needs mod status, php-fpm status to be activated, access to mysql etc
  • during the crash of a server, netdata metrics can be lost, this happened to me

Give it a try and explore this tool.