Start the Grafana server
This topic includes instructions for starting the Grafana server. For certain configuration changes, you might have to restart the Grafana server for them to take effect.
The following instructions start the grafana-server
process as the grafana
user, which was created during the package installation.
If you installed with the APT repository or .deb
package, then you can start the server using systemd
or init.d
. If you installed a binary .tar.gz
file, then you execute the binary.
Linux
The following subsections describe three methods of starting and restarting the Grafana server: with systemd, initd, or by directly running the binary. You should follow only one set of instructions, depending on how your machine is configured.
Start the Grafana server with systemd
Complete the following steps to start the Grafana server using systemd and verify that it is running.
-
To start the service, run the following commands:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl start grafana-server sudo systemctl status grafana-server
-
To verify that the service is running, run the following command:
sudo systemctl status grafana-server
Configure the Grafana server to start at boot using systemd
To configure the Grafana server to start at boot, run the following command:
sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service
Restart the Grafana server using systemd
To restart the Grafana server, run the following commands:
sudo systemctl restart grafana-server
NOTE: SUSE or openSUSE users might need to start the server with the systemd method, then use the init.d method to configure Grafana to start at boot.
Start the Grafana server using init.d
Complete the following steps to start the Grafana server using init.d and verify that it is running:
-
To start the Grafana server, run the following commands:
sudo service grafana-server start sudo service grafana-server status
-
To verify that the service is running, run the following command:
sudo service grafana-server status
Docker
To restart the Grafana service, use the docker restart
command.
docker restart grafana
Alternatively, you can use the docker compose restart
command to restart Grafana. For more information, refer to docker compose documentation.
Docker compose example
Configure your docker-compose.yml
file. For example:
version: "3.8"
services:
grafana:
image: grafana/grafana:latest
container_name: grafana
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
- TERM=linux
- GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-clock-panel,grafana-polystat-panel
ports:
- '3000:3000'
volumes:
- 'grafana_storage:/var/lib/grafana'
volumes:
grafana_storage: {}
Start the Grafana server:
docker compose up -d
This starts the Grafana server container in detached mode along with the two plugins specified in the YAML file.
To restart the running container, use this command:
docker compose restart grafana
Windows
Complete the following steps to start the Grafana server on Windows:
-
Execute
grafana.exe server
; thegrafana
binary is located in thebin
directory.We recommend that you run
grafana.exe server
from the command line.If you want to run Grafana as a Windows service, you can download NSSM.
-
To run Grafana, open your browser and go to the Grafana port (http://localhost:3000/ is default).
Note: The default Grafana port is
3000
. This port might require extra permissions on Windows. If it does not appear in the default port, you can try changing to a different port. -
To change the port, complete the following steps:
-
In the
conf
directory, copysample.ini
tocustom.ini
.Note: You should edit
custom.ini
, neverdefaults.ini
. -
Edit
custom.ini
and uncomment thehttp_port
configuration option (;
is the comment character in ini files) and change it to something similar to8080
, which should not require extra Windows privileges.
-
To restart the Grafana server, complete the following steps:
-
Open the Services app.
-
Right-click on the Grafana service.
-
In the context menu, click Restart.
macOS
Restart methods differ depending on whether you installed Grafana using Homebrew or as standalone macOS binaries.
Start Grafana using Homebrew
To start Grafana using Homebrew, run the following start command:
brew services start grafana
Next steps
After the Grafana server is up and running, consider taking the next steps:
-
Refer to Get Started to learn how to build your first dashboard.
-
Refer to Configuration to learn about how you can customize your environment.