Installation

This page provides directions for installing, starting, and configuring InfluxDB.

Requirements

Installation of the pre-built InfluxDB package requires root privileges on the host machine.

Networking

By default InfluxDB will use TCP ports 8083 and 8086 so these ports should be available on your system. Once installation is complete you can change those ports and other options in the configuration file, which is located by default in /etc/influxdb.

Ubuntu & Debian

Debian and Ubuntu users can install the latest stable version of InfluxDB using the apt-get package manager. For Ubuntu users, you can add the InfluxData repository configuration by using the following commands:

curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key | sudo apt-key add -
source /etc/lsb-release
echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/${DISTRIB_ID,,} ${DISTRIB_CODENAME} stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list

For Debian users, you can add the InfluxData repository configuration by using the following commands:

curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key | sudo apt-key add -
source /etc/os-release
test $VERSION_ID = "7" && echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian wheezy stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
test $VERSION_ID = "8" && echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian jessie stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list

And then to install and start the InfluxDB service:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install influxdb
sudo service influxdb start

RedHat & CentOS

RedHat and CentOS users can install the latest stable version of InfluxDB using the yum package manager:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/influxdb.repo
[influxdb]
name = InfluxDB Repository - RHEL \$releasever
baseurl = https://repos.influxdata.com/rhel/\$releasever/\$basearch/stable
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key
EOF

Once repository is added to the yum configuration, you can install and start the InfluxDB service by running:

sudo yum install influxdb
sudo service influxdb start

SLES & openSUSE

There are RPM packages provided by openSUSE Build Service for SUSE Linux users:

# add go repository
zypper ar -f obs://devel:languages:go/ go
# install latest influxdb
zypper in influxdb

FreeBSD/PC-BSD

InfluxDB is part of the FreeBSD package system. It can be installed by running

sudo pkg install influxdb

The configuration file is /usr/local/etc/influxd.conf with examples in /usr/local/etc/influxd.conf.sample. Start the backend by executing

sudo service influxd onestart

and/or adding influxd_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf to launch influxd during system boot.

macOS

Users of macOS 10.8 and higher can install using the Homebrew package manager.

brew update
brew install influxdb

To have launchd start influxdb at login:

ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/influxdb/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents

Then to load influxdb now:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.influxdb.plist

Or, if you don’t want/need launchctl, in a separate terminal window you can just run:

influxd -config /usr/local/etc/influxdb.conf

Hosted

For users who don’t want to install any software and are ready to use InfluxDB, you may want to check out our managed hosted InfluxDB offering.

⇒ Now get started!

Generate a configuration file

Configuration files from prior versions of InfluxDB 0.9 should work with future releases, but the old files may lack configuration options for new features. It is a best practice to generate a new config file for each upgrade. Any changes made in the old file will need to be manually ported to the newly generated file. The newly generated configuration file has no knowledge of any local customization to the settings.

To generate a new config file, run influxd config and redirect the output to a file. For example:

influxd config > /etc/influxdb/influxdb.generated.conf

Edit the influxdb.generated.conf file to have the desired configuration settings. When launching InfluxDB, point the process to the correct configuration file using the -config option.

influxd -config /etc/influxdb/influxdb.generated.conf

In addition, a valid configuration file can be displayed at any time using the command influxd config. Redirect the output to a file to save a clean generated configuration file.

If no -config option is supplied, InfluxDB will use an internal default configuration equivalent to the output of influxd config

Note: The influxd command has two similarly named flags. The config flag prints a generated default configuration file to STDOUT but does not launch the influxd process. The -config flag takes a single argument, which is the path to the InfluxDB configuration file to use when launching the process.

The config and -config flags can be combined to output the union of the internal default configuration and the configuration file passed to -config. The options specified in the configuration file will overwrite any internally generated configuration.

influxd config -config /etc/influxdb/influxdb.partial.conf

The output will show every option configured in the influxdb.partial.conf file and will substitute internal defaults for any configuration options not specified in that file.

The example configuration file shipped with the installer is for information only. It is an identical file to the internally generated configuration except that the example file has comments.

Hosting on AWS

Hardware

We recommend using two SSD volumes. One for the influxdb/wal and one for the influxdb/data. Depending on your load each volume should have around 1k-3k provisioned IOPS. The influxdb/data volume should have more disk space with lower IOPS and the influxdb/wal volume should have less disk space with higher IOPS.

Each machine should have a minimum of 8G RAM.

We’ve seen the best performance with the C3 class of machines.

Configuring the Instance

This example assumes that you are using two SSD volumes and that you have mounted them appropriately. This example also assumes that each of those volumes is mounted at /mnt/influx and /mnt/db. For more information on how to do that see the Amazon documentation on how to Add a Volume to Your Instance.

Config File

You’ll have to update the config file appropriately for each InfluxDB instance you have.

...

[meta]
  dir = "/mnt/db/meta"
  ...

...

[data]
  dir = "/mnt/db/data"
  ...
wal-dir = "/mnt/influx/wal"
  ...

...

[hinted-handoff]
    ...
dir = "/mnt/db/hh"
    ...

Permissions

When using non-standard directories for InfluxDB data and configurations, also be sure to set filesystem permissions correctly:

chown influxdb:influxdb /mnt/influx
chown influxdb:influxdb /mnt/db

Other Considerations

If you’re planning on using a cluster, you may also want to set hostname and join flags for the INFLUXD_OPTS variable in /etc/default/influxdb. For example:

INFLUXD_OPTS='-hostname host[:port] [-join hostname_1:port_1[,hostname_2:port_2]]'

For more detailed instructions on how to set up a cluster, see the documentation on clustering

Development Versions

Nightly packages are available for Linux through the InfluxData package repository by using the nightly channel. Other package options can be found on the downloads page