Standalone docker-compose install

[mwolter805]

@mdegat01 Thanks for creating this container and filling the void left by Grafana.

Thought I'd share how to use this container on a standalone docker install in case others use Home Assistant Container. This uses /ready to perform a healthcheck and also passes through the host name of the docker host for use in the config. This has been tested on a Pi 4 running rasbian 10 buster.

Create the promtail folder:
mkdir -p ~/promtail && cd ~/promtail

Change the following in promtail.yaml

• clients: url to the IP of the machine running Loki

Save the files below in the ~/promtail folder made above and remove the .txt extensions.
run_promtail.sh.txt
docker-compose.yaml.txt
promtail.yaml.txt

Make sure run_promtail.sh is executable
sudo chmod a+x ~/promtail/run_promtail.sh

Create the container
sudo docker-compose up -d

Verify metrics
wget -qO- http://localhost:9080/metrics

Verify readiness
wget -qO- http://localhost:9080/ready

[mdegat01]

Thanks! Yea I was surprised they did not publish a container that came pre-made with a binary capable of reading from the journal. I mostly made this so my PRs stopped taking forever in the promtail addon repo due to making the binary every time but great that its also able to be used standalone.

I can take a look at this and update the doc to include this usage option. Although before I do, one quick question, is there an advantage to doing this in a Container install over using their docker driver? When I was reading through the Grafana's documentation it seemed like they were pushing people to use their docker driver in docker setups instead of trying to use promtail to read the docker logs. That's not an option in the supervised install because using journal logging is a requirement (and also because I tried and it broke everything 😄). I had thought that people doing a container install would be able to go that route though.

I ask because that is what I had posted on this community guide for setting up the PLG stack in a container install. If that's wrong though and this way is better I will gladly update the doc here and link to it back there.

[mwolter805]

Hi,
Yep, you're right, for docker logs it's best to use the docker driver. What I'm using this for is to forward the systemd Journal logs and syslogs from a Raspberry Pi. Grafana's promtail only forwards syslogs for arm machines and not journal logs, that's where your's fills the gap. Their amd64 promtail does journal and syslogs, not their arm install.

Grafana's docker driver is used to forward console logs from docker containers. It doesn't do journal or syslogs. So you need promtail and the docker driver if you want everything. And you need your promtail instead of theirs if you want everything from an arm machine.

Systemd journal logs might be overkill for most users, but I have an issue where the Pi is locking up every week or so and I'm trying to forward all logs for troubleshooting. Hopefully, this will give me some indication as to what's going on.

Hopefully this helps clear it up. Thanks again!

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