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Filebeat Configuration

A log shipper designed for files.

Filebeat is an open source shipping agent that lets you ship logs from local files to one or more destinations, including Logstash.

Step 1 - Install Filebeat

deb (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint)

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/filebeat/filebeat-oss-7.15.1-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i filebeat-oss-7.15.1-amd64.deb

rpm (CentOS/RHEL/Fedora)

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/filebeat/filebeat-oss-7.15.1-x86_64.rpm
sudo rpm -vi filebeat-oss-7.15.1-x86_64.rpm

macOS

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/filebeat/filebeat-oss-7.15.1-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz 
tar xzvf filebeat-oss-7.15.1-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz

Windows

Download the Filebeat Windows zip file from the official downloads page.
Extract the contents of the zip file into C:\Program Files.
Rename the filebeat-<version>-windows directory to Filebeat.
Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator). If you are running Windows XP, you may need to download and install PowerShell.
Run the following commands to install Filebeat as a Windows service:

cd 'C:\Program Files\Filebeat'
.\install-service-filebeat.ps1`

If script execution is disabled on your system, you need to set the execution policy for the current session to allow the script to run. For example: PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-filebeat.ps1.

My OS isn't here! Don't see your system? Check out the official downloads page for more options (including 32-bit versions).

Step 2 - Locate the configuration file

deb/rpm /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml
mac/win <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>/filebeat.yml

Step 3 - Configure the inputs

Configure the paths you wish to ship, by editing the input path variables. These fully support wildcards and can also include a document type.

The default filebeat.inputs section looks as below

filebeat.inputs:

- type: log

  # Change to true to enable this input configuration.
  enabled: false

  # Paths that should be crawled and fetched. Glob based paths.
  paths:
  - /var/log/*.log

There's also a full example configuration file called filebeat.reference.yml that shows all the possible options.

Step 4 - Enable the input

We need to ensure that any inputs we are using are enabled

filebeat.inputs:

- type: log
  enabled: false

Enable the filebeat input, so it should look like the following

filebeat.inputs:

- type: log
  enabled: true

Step 5 - Configure Modules (Optional)

Filebeat also has modules that can be displayed, enabled or disabled using

deb/rpm

sudo filebeat modules list
sudo filebeat modules enable <module name>
sudo filebeat modules disable <module name>

macOS

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
./filebeat modules list
./filebeat modules enable <module name>
./filebeat modules disable <module name>

Windows

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
filebeat.exe modules list
filebeat.exe modules enable <module name>
filebeat.exe modules disable <module name>

Additionally module configuration can be done using the per module config files located in the modules.d folder, most commonly this would be to read logs from a non-default location

deb/rpm /etc/filebeat/modules.d/
mac/win <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>/modules.d/

Step 6 - Configure output

We'll be shipping to Logstash so that we have the option to run filters before the data is indexed.
Comment out the elasticsearch output block.

## Comment out elasticsearch output
#output.elasticsearch:
#  hosts: ["localhost:9200"]

No input available! Your stack is missing the required input for this data source Talk to support to add the input

Step 7 - Validate configuration

Let's check the configuration file is syntactically correct by running directly inside the terminal. If the file is invalid, will print an error loading config file error message with details on how to correct the problem.

deb/rpm

sudo  -e -c /etc//.yml

macOS

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
./ -e -c .yml

Windows

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
.\.exe -e -c .yml

Step 8 - Start filebeat

Ok, time to start ingesting data!

deb/rpm

sudo systemctl enable filebeat
sudo systemctl start filebeat

mac

./filebeat

Windows

Start-Service filebeat

Step 9 - how to diagnose no data in Stack

If you don't see data appearing in your Stack after following the steps, visit the Help Centre guide for steps to diagnose no data appearing in your Stack or Chat to support now.

Step 10 - Filebeat Overview

Filebeat is the most popular way to send logs to ELK due to its reliability & minimal memory footprint. It is the leading Beat out of the entire collection of open-source shipping tools, including Auditbeat, Metricbeat & Heartbeat.

Filebeat's origins begin from combining key features from Logstash-Forwarder & Lumberjack & is written in Go. Within the logging pipeline, Filebeat can generate, parse, tail & forward common logs to be indexed within Elasticsearch. The harvester is often compared to Logstash but it is not a suitable replacement & instead should be used in tandem for most use cases.

Earlier versions of Filebeat suffered from a very limited scope & only allowed the user to send events to Logstash & Elasticsearch. More recent versions of the shipper have been updated to be compatible with Redis & Kafka.

A misconfigured Filebeat setup can lead to many complex logging concerns that this filebeat.yml wizard aims to solve. Just a couple of examples of these include excessively large registry files & file handlers that error frequently when encountering deleted or renamed log files. Tracking numerous pipelines using this shipper can become tedious for self hosted Elastic Stacks so you may wish to consider our Hosted ELK service as a solution to this.

If you need any further assistance with migrating your log data to ELK we're here to help you get started. Feel free to get in contact with our support team by sending us a message via live chat & we'll be happy to assist.

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