Deprecation Note

We published the last version of Graylog Documentation before the release of Graylog 4.2. Now, all documentation and help content for Graylog products are available at https://docs.graylog.org/.

There will be no further updates to these pages as of October 2021.

Do you have questions about our documentation? You may place comments or start discussions about documentation here: https://community.graylog.org/c/documentation-campfire/30

Docker¶

Requirements¶

You will need a fairly recent version of Docker.

We will use the following Docker images in this chapter:

Graylog: graylog/graylog
MongoDB: mongo
Elasticsearch: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch

Quick start¶

If you want to checkout Graylog on your local desktop without any further customization, you can run the following three commands to create the necessary environment:

$ docker run --name mongo -d mongo:3
$ docker run --name elasticsearch \
    -e "http.host=0.0.0.0" \
    -e "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m" \
    -d docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
$ docker run --name graylog --link mongo --link elasticsearch \
    -p 9000:9000 -p 12201:12201 -p 1514:1514 \
    -e GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI="http://127.0.0.1:9000/" \
    -d graylog/graylog:3.2

Warning

All configuration examples are created to run on the local computer. Should those be used on external servers, adjust GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI and add GRAYLOG_HTTP_PUBLISH_URI and GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI according to the server.conf documentation.

How to get log data in¶

You can create different kinds of inputs under System / Inputs, however you can only use ports that have been properly mapped to your docker container, otherwise data will not go through.

For example, to start a Raw/Plaintext TCP input on port 5555, stop your container and recreate it, while appending -p 5555:5555 to your docker run command:

$ docker run --link mongo --link elasticsearch \
    -p 9000:9000 -p 12201:12201 -p 1514:1514 -p 5555:5555 \
    -e GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI="http://127.0.0.1:9000/" \
    -d graylog/graylog:3.2

Similarly, the same can be done for UDP by appending -p 5555:5555/udp.

After that you can send a plaintext message to the Graylog Raw/Plaintext TCP input running on port 5555 using the following command:

$ echo 'First log message' | nc localhost 5555

Settings¶

Graylog comes with a default configuration that works out of the box but you have to set a password for the admin user and the web interface needs to know how to connect from your browser to the Graylog REST API.

Both settings can be configured via environment variables (also see Configuration):

-e GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2=8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918
-e GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI="http://127.0.0.1:9000/"

In this case you can login to Graylog with the username and password admin.

Generate your own admin password with the following command and put the SHA-256 hash into the GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2 environment variable:

echo -n "Enter Password: " && head -1 </dev/stdin | tr -d '\n' | sha256sum | cut -d" " -f1

All these settings and command line parameters can be put in a docker-compose.yml file, so that they don’t have to be executed one after the other.

Example Version 2:

version: '2'
services:
  # MongoDB: https://hub.docker.com/_/mongo/
  mongodb:
    image: mongo:3
  # Elasticsearch: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.x/docker.html
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
    environment:
      - http.host=0.0.0.0
      - transport.host=localhost
      - network.host=0.0.0.0
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
    mem_limit: 1g
  # Graylog: https://hub.docker.com/r/graylog/graylog/
  graylog:
    image: graylog/graylog:3.2
    environment:
      # CHANGE ME (must be at least 16 characters)!
      - GRAYLOG_PASSWORD_SECRET=somepasswordpepper
      # Password: admin
      - GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2=8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918
      - GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI=http://127.0.0.1:9000/
    links:
      - mongodb:mongo
      - elasticsearch
    depends_on:
      - mongodb
      - elasticsearch
    ports:
      # Graylog web interface and REST API
      - 9000:9000
      # Syslog TCP
      - 1514:1514
      # Syslog UDP
      - 1514:1514/udp
      # GELF TCP
      - 12201:12201
      # GELF UDP
      - 12201:12201/udp

Example Version 3:

version: '3'
services:
  # MongoDB: https://hub.docker.com/_/mongo/
  mongo:
    image: mongo:3
    networks:
      - graylog
  # Elasticsearch: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.x/docker.html
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
    environment:
      - http.host=0.0.0.0
      - transport.host=localhost
      - network.host=0.0.0.0
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          memory: 1g
    networks:
      - graylog
  # Graylog: https://hub.docker.com/r/graylog/graylog/
  graylog:
    image: graylog/graylog:3.2
    environment:
      # CHANGE ME (must be at least 16 characters)!
      - GRAYLOG_PASSWORD_SECRET=somepasswordpepper
      # Password: admin
      - GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2=8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918
      - GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI=http://127.0.0.1:9000/
    networks:
      - graylog
    depends_on:
      - mongo
      - elasticsearch
    ports:
      # Graylog web interface and REST API
      - 9000:9000
      # Syslog TCP
      - 1514:1514
      # Syslog UDP
      - 1514:1514/udp
      # GELF TCP
      - 12201:12201
      # GELF UDP
      - 12201:12201/udp
networks:
  graylog:
    driver: bridge

After starting all three Docker containers by running docker-compose up, you can open the URL http://127.0.0.1:9000 in a web browser and log in with username admin and password admin (make sure to change the password later). Change GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI= to your server IP if you run Docker remotely.

Configuration¶

Every configuration option can be set via environment variables. Simply prefix the parameter name with GRAYLOG_ and put it all in upper case.

For example, setting up the SMTP configuration for sending Graylog alert notifications via email, the docker-compose.yml would look like this:

version: '2'
services:
  mongo:
    image: "mongo:3"
    # Other settings [...]
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
    # Other settings [...]
  graylog:
    image: graylog/graylog:3.2
    # Other settings [...]
    environment:
      GRAYLOG_TRANSPORT_EMAIL_ENABLED: "true"
      GRAYLOG_TRANSPORT_EMAIL_HOSTNAME: smtp
      GRAYLOG_TRANSPORT_EMAIL_PORT: 25
      GRAYLOG_TRANSPORT_EMAIL_USE_AUTH: "false"
      GRAYLOG_TRANSPORT_EMAIL_USE_TLS: "false"
      GRAYLOG_TRANSPORT_EMAIL_USE_SSL: "false"

Another option would be to store the configuration file outside of the container and edit it directly.

Custom configuration files¶

Instead of using a long list of environment variables to configure Graylog (see Configuration), you can also overwrite the bundled Graylog configuration files.

The bundled configuration files are stored in /usr/share/graylog/data/config/ inside the Docker container.

Create the new configuration directory next to the docker-compose.yml file and copy the default files from GitHub:

$ mkdir -p ./graylog/config
$ cd ./graylog/config
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Graylog2/graylog-docker/3.2/config/graylog.conf
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Graylog2/graylog-docker/3.2/config/log4j2.xml

The newly created directory ./graylog/config/ with the custom configuration files now has to be mounted into the Graylog Docker container.

This can be done by adding an entry to the volumes section of the docker-compose.yml file:

version: '2'
services:
  mongodb:
    image: mongo:3
    # Other settings [...]
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
    # Other settings [...]
  graylog:
    image: graylog/graylog:3.2
    # Other settings [...]
    volumes:
      # Mount local configuration directory into Docker container
      - ./graylog/config:/usr/share/graylog/data/config

Warning

Graylog is running as USER graylog with the ID 1100 in Docker. That ID need to be able to read the configuration files you place into the container.

Reading individual configuration settings from files¶

The Graylog Docker image supports reading individual configuration settings from a file. This can be used to secure configuration settings with Docker secrets or similar mechanisms.

This has the advantage, that configuration settings containing sensitive information don’t have to be added to a custom configuration file or into an environment variable in plaintext.

The Graylog Docker image checks for the existence of environment variables with the naming scheme GRAYLOG_<CONFIG_NAME>__FILE on startup and expects the environment variable to contain the absolute path to a readable file.

For example, if the environment variable GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2__FILE contained the value /run/secrets/root_password_hash, the Graylog Docker image would use the contents of /run/secrets/root_password_hash as value for the root_password_sha2 configuration setting.

Docker secrets¶

Note

Docker secrets are only available in Docker Swarm services starting with Docker 1.13. Please refer to Manage sensitive data with Docker secrets for more details.

Example for using Docker secrets in a Docker Swarm service:

# Create SHA-256 hash of our password
$ echo -n 'password' | sha256sum | awk '{ print $1 }'
5e884898da28047151d0e56f8dc6292773603d0d6aabbdd62a11ef721d1542d8

# Create a Docker secret named "root_password_hash"
$ printf '5e884898da28047151d0e56f8dc6292773603d0d6aabbdd62a11ef721d1542d8' | \
  docker secret create root_password_hash -
nlujwooo5uu6z0m91bmve79uo

$ docker secret ls
ID                          NAME                 DRIVER              CREATED             UPDATED
nlujwooo5uu6z0m91bmve79uo   root_password_hash                       34 seconds ago      34 seconds ago

# Create Docker Swarm service named "graylog" with access
# to the secret named "root_password_hash"
$ docker service create --name graylog \
 --secret root_password_hash \
 -e GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2__FILE=/run/secrets/root_password_hash \
 -p 9000:9000 graylog/graylog:3.1
mclk5gm39ingk51s869dc0htz
overall progress: 1 out of 1 tasks
1/1: running   [==================================================>]
verify: Service converged

$ docker service ls
ID                  NAME                MODE                REPLICAS            IMAGE               PORTS
mclk5gm39ing        graylog             replicated          1/1                 graylog:latest      *:9000->9000/tcp

Persisting data¶

In order to make the recorded data persistent, you can use external volumes to store all data. In case of a container restart, this will simply re-use the existing data from the former instances.

Using Docker volumes for the data of MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Graylog, the docker-compose.yml file looks as follows:

version: '2'
services:
  # MongoDB: https://hub.docker.com/_/mongo/
  mongodb:
    image: mongo:3
    volumes:
      - mongo_data:/data/db
  # Elasticsearch: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.x/docker.html
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
    volumes:
      - es_data:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
    environment:
      - http.host=0.0.0.0
      - transport.host=localhost
      - network.host=0.0.0.0
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
    mem_limit: 1g
  # Graylog: https://hub.docker.com/r/graylog/graylog/
  graylog:
    image: graylog/graylog:3.2
    volumes:
      - graylog_journal:/usr/share/graylog/data/journal
    environment:
      # CHANGE ME (must be at least 16 characters)!
      - GRAYLOG_PASSWORD_SECRET=somepasswordpepper
      # Password: admin
      - GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2=8c6976e5b5410415bde908bd4dee15dfb167a9c873fc4bb8a81f6f2ab448a918
      - GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI=http://127.0.0.1:9000/
    links:
      - mongodb:mongo
      - elasticsearch
    depends_on:
      - mongodb
      - elasticsearch
    ports:
      # Graylog web interface and REST API
      - 9000:9000
      # Syslog TCP
      - 1514:1514
      # Syslog UDP
      - 1514:1514/udp
      # GELF TCP
      - 12201:12201
      # GELF UDP
      - 12201:12201/udp
# Volumes for persisting data, see https://docs.docker.com/engine/admin/volumes/volumes/
volumes:
  mongo_data:
    driver: local
  es_data:
    driver: local
  graylog_journal:
    driver: local

Start all services with exposed data directories:

$ docker-compose up

Plugins¶

In order to add plugins you can build a new image based on the existing graylog/graylog Docker image with the needed plugin included or you add a volume that points to the locally downloaded plugin file.

New Docker image¶

Simply create a new Dockerfile in an empty directory with the following contents:

FROM graylog/graylog:3.2
RUN wget -O /usr/share/graylog/plugin/graylog-plugin-auth-sso-3.2.0.jar https://github.com/Graylog2/graylog-plugin-auth-sso/releases/download/3.0.0/graylog-plugin-auth-sso-3.2.0.jar

Build a new image from the new Dockerfile (also see docker build):

$ docker build -t graylog-with-sso-plugin .

In this example, we created a new image with the SSO plugin installed. From now on reference to the newly built image instead of graylog/graylog.

The docker-compose.yml file has to reference the new Docker image:

version: '2'
services:
  mongo:
    image: "mongo:3"
    # Other settings [...]
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
    # Other settings [...]
  graylog:
    image: graylog-with-sso-plugin
    # Other settings [...]

Volume-mounted plugin¶

Instead of building a new docker image, you can also add additional plugins by mounting them directly and individually into the plugin folder of the original Docker image. This way, you don’t have to create a new docker image every time you want to add a new plugin (or remove an old one).

Simply create a plugin folder, download the plugin(s) you want to install into it and mount each file as an additional volume into the docker container:

$ mkdir -p ./graylog/plugin
$ wget -O ./graylog/plugin/graylog-plugin-auth-sso-2.3.0.jar https://github.com/Graylog2/graylog-plugin-auth-sso/releases/download/2.3.0/graylog-plugin-auth-sso-2.3.0.jar

The docker-compose.yml file has to reference the new Docker image:

version: '2'
services:
  mongo:
    image: "mongo:3"
    # Other settings [...]
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss:6.8.5
    # Other settings [...]
  graylog:
    image: graylog/graylog:3.2
    # Other settings [...]
    volumes:
      # Mount local plugin file into Docker container
      - ./graylog/plugin/graylog-plugin-auth-sso-2.3.0.jar:/usr/share/graylog/plugin/graylog-plugin-auth-sso-2.3.0.jar

You can add as many of these links as you wish in your docker-compose.yml file. Simply restart the container and docker will recreate the graylog container with the new volumes included:

$ docker-compose restart

Kubernetes automatic master selection¶

Running Graylog in Kubernetes opens the challenge to set the is_master=true setting only for one node in the cluster. The problem can be solved by calculating the name of the pod if Graylog is running in a stafeful set with the following environment variable:

env:
- name: POD_NAME
  valueFrom:
    fieldRef:
      fieldPath: metadata.name

For a stateful set, the name of the first pod in a cluster always ends with -0. See the Documentation about stateful set . The master selection mechanism in docker-entrypoint.sh file does the following:

Examine if Graylog is running inside Kubernetes
Verify that the pod name ends in -0
Set is_master=true for this container

Nomad automatic master selection¶

When running Graylog in a Nomad cluster, you must ensure that only one node in the cluster has the setting is_master=true in the server.conf file.

Whether the container is running on Nomad may be identified with an environmetal check on NOMAD_ALLOC_INDEX. Should that variable be set to 0, the container will set Graylog to is_master=true. If the variable is set to anything other than 0 , it will set Graylog to is_master=false.

Troubleshooting¶

In case you see warnings regarding open file limit, try to set ulimit from the outside of the container:
```
$ docker run --ulimit nofile=64000:64000 ...
```
The devicemapper storage driver can produce problems with Graylogs disk journal on some systems. In this case please pick another driver like aufs or overlay.

Testing a beta version¶

Caution

We only recommend running pre-release versions if you are an experienced Graylog user and know what you are doing.

You can also run a pre-release (alpha, beta, or release candidate) version of Graylog using Docker.

The pre-releases are tagged in the graylog/graylog Docker image.

See the available tags for the Graylog image on Docker Hub and pick an alpha/beta/rc tag like this:

$ docker run --link mongo --link elasticsearch -p 9000:9000 -p 12201:12201 -p 1514:1514 \
    -e GRAYLOG_HTTP_BIND_ADDRESS="127.0.0.1:9000" \
    -d graylog/graylog:3.2.0-beta.1-1