Filebeat and systemd

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The DEB and RPM packages include a service unit for Linux systems with systemd. On these systems, you can manage Filebeat by using the usual systemd commands.

Start and stop Filebeat

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Use systemctl to start or stop Filebeat:

systemctl start filebeat
systemctl stop filebeat

By default, the Filebeat service starts automatically when the system boots. To enable or disable auto start use:

systemctl enable filebeat
systemctl disable filebeat

Filebeat status and logs

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To get the service status, use systemctl:

systemctl status filebeat

Logs are stored by default in journald. To view the Logs, use journalctl:

journalctl -u filebeat.service

The unit file included in the packages sets the -e flag by default. This flag makes Filebeat log to stderr and disables other log outputs. Systemd stores all output sent to stderr in journald.

Customize systemd unit for Filebeat

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The systemd service unit file includes environment variables that you can override to change the default options.

Variable Description Default value

BEAT_LOG_OPTS

Log options

-e

BEAT_CONFIG_OPTS

Flags for configuration file path

-c /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml

BEAT_PATH_OPTS

Other paths

-path.home /usr/share/filebeat -path.config /etc/filebeat -path.data /var/lib/filebeat -path.logs /var/log/filebeat

To override these variables, create a drop-in unit file in the /etc/systemd/system/filebeat.service.d directory.

For example a file with the following content placed in /etc/systemd/system/filebeat.service.d/debug.conf would override BEAT_LOG_OPTS to enable debug for Elasticsearch output.

[Service]
Environment="BEAT_LOG_OPTS=-e -d elasticsearch"

To change the logging output from the Filebeat configuration file, empty the environment variable. For example:

[Service]
Environment="BEAT_LOG_OPTS="

To apply your changes, reload the systemd configuration and restart the service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart filebeat

It is recommended that you use a configuration management tool to include drop-in unit files. If you need to add a drop-in manually, use systemctl edit filebeat.service.