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Grafana as a Service

Introduction​

In this guide Grafana will be setup on Ubuntu 24.04 as a service.

Alternate Installation Methods​

Grafana can also be setup to run in Docker or in the cloud with Grafana Cloud. One benefit of running Grafana locally is that it is a much cleaner installation. With Grafana cloud you get a lot of prebuilt data sources and dashboards which can make it more "busy" than with a local installation.

OSS vs Enterprise​

There are two versions: OSS (open source) and Enterprise. They are both free and have the same features. If you may want to get a license and pay for Grafana then use the Enterprise version as it can be unlocked without needing to reinstall. I will use the OSS version in this guide.

apt vs .deb​

There are two ways to install Grafana as a service, both are covered in this wiki. The first way is manually adding the apt package and installing via apt. The second method is downloading the .deb file and installing via dpkg. When using apt, you can easily update Grafana to the latest version via apt. apt will also automatically install the dependencies. This is my preferred method, but if you want more control over updates then you can just install the .deb

Installation via CLI​

First identify the latest version on the Grafana Downloads page. At the time of writing this wiki, the latest version is grafana_11.3.0_amd64.deb and will be used in this wiki.

Install dependencies​

sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https software-properties-common wget

Import the GPG key​

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings/
wget -q -O - https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg > /dev/null

Add repo​

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg] https://apt.grafana.com stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

Update packages​

sudo apt-get update

Install Grafana.​

sudo apt-get install grafana

Installation via deb​

First identify the latest version on the Grafana Downloads page. At the time of writing this wiki, the latest version is grafana_11.3.0_amd64.deb and will be used in this wiki.

Install dependencies​

sudo apt-get install -y adduser libfontconfig1 musl

Download​

Download the isntall package to home folder

wget -P ~/ https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana_11.3.0_amd64.deb

Install via dpkg​

sudo dpkg -i ~/grafana_11.3.0_amd64.deb

Start and Enable the Service​

By default, the grafana service is not started after the installation. Grafana will run on port 3000, if you need to change the port that Grafana runs on (skip to Reload the daemon if you do not need to change the port):

Configure Port​

sudo nano /etc/grafana/grafana.ini

Then identify the section where it specifies the http_port, remove the leading ; and update the port to one that is available on your host. Then save the file with ctrl + x, then y, then enter.

grafana-service-port

Reload the Daemon​

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start Grafana Service​

sudo systemctl start grafana-server

Verify​

sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Enable Service​

To automatically start the grafana server at boot, enable the service

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server

Grafana should now be running.

Sign In​

Open Web Browser​

By default Grafana should be running on http://localhost:3000. If you installed Grafana on a different host than what you use to connect to it, replace "localhost" with the internal IP address of the host where Grafana was installed.

Credentials​

The username and password is admin.

grafana-login

When prompted, change the password to something more secure.

grafana-update-password

Once you have signed in you can begin adding data sources and creating dashboards.

Uninstall​

If you ever want to uninstall Grafana, the steps are specified on the Grafana Wiki.

However they leave a few remnants of Grafana which I like to remove. These are the steps I typically take

Stop the service

sudo systemctl stop grafana-server

Purge Grafana

sudo apt-get remove --purge grafana

Remove Grafana directories:

sudo rm -rf /etc/grafana        # Configuration files
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/grafana     # Data storage (SQLite database, etc.)
sudo rm -rf /var/log/grafana     # Log files

Remove residual dependencies

sudo apt-get autoremove

Remove the grafana.list

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

Refresh your packages

sudo apt-get update

This should completely clear Grafana from your system.