Finally getting around to installing grafana on a local home server so I can graph a thing or two J https://grafana.com/ [1]

Download and setup

First see what version of ubuntu you are on

> lsb_release -a

On this particular server I have set up a second drive located at /prometheus and that is where I am going to place grafana (and later Prometheus… but not going over that in this tutorial)

Go check out grafana downloads at

https://grafana.com/grafana/download [2]

If you scroll down a little you can select your OS (linux)

Then you can get some simple instructions on how to download the latest

So let me download it

> wget https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana_7.3.7_amd64.deb

Add libfontconfig1 user and then install

> sudo apt-get install -y adduser libfontconfig1
> sudo dpkg -i grafana_7.3.7_amd64.deb

Check current status of grafana server

> sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Enable the service so it will auto start on reboot

> sudo /bin/systemctl enable grafana-server

Start the service then check its status

> sudo systemctl start grafana-server
> sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Now pull up the web page as a test

Let me pull ports to make this simpler to open

> ssh prometheus -L 3000:localhost:3000

Now open up

http://localhost:3000/

Attempt to login as admin:admin

Wahoo..

OK now let’s tweak it.

Change directories

This is using systemD you can easily see the which systemD file by running this command

> sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Let me go look at that file

> sudo vi /lib/systemd/system/grafana-server.service

Open up this file

> sudo vi /etc/default/grafana-server

And make a few edits

Since I am going to move these to my second drive

Now stop the service

> sudo systemctl stop grafana-server

Make some directories, set ownership/permissions and move files

> sudo mkdir -p /prometheus/grafana/data
> sudo mkdir -p /prometheus/grafana/plugins
> sudo chown -R grafana:grafana /prometheus/grafana
> sudo mv /etc/grafana/grafana.ini /prometheus/grafana/