# How to setup fluentbit on Ubuntu > Setup Fluent Bit on Ubuntu for Efficient Log Forwarding Source: https://openobserve.ai/blog/setup-fluent-bit-on-ubuntu-for-efficient-log-forwarding/ Published: 2023-07-24 Authors: Prabhat Sharma Category: How To Tags: Infrastructure, Logging --- ## How to setup fluentbit on Ubuntu In this blog, we will look at how to setup fluentbit on Ubuntu. We will also look at how to configure fluentbit to forward logs to OpenObserve. ## What is fluentbit? Fluent Bit is an open source and multi-platform Log Forwarder which allows you to collect data/logs from different sources, unify and send them to multiple destinations. It's fully compatible with Docker and Kubernetes environments as well as bare metal instances and virtual machines. It's able to collect logs from different sources such as Linux kernel logs, application logs, file logs, logs from the standard input, and more. Fluent Bit is the Fluentd's little brother, it's super light, and it's written in C language and recommended over Fluentd for most scenarios. ## Setup Official instructions are available at https://docs.fluentbit.io/manual/installation/linux/ubuntu, but need little tweaking. Let's follow the following steps to setup fluentbit on Ubuntu: ### 1. Setup Server GPG key ```shell sudo sh -c 'curl https://packages.fluentbit.io/fluentbit.key | gpg --dearmor > /usr/share/keyrings/fluentbit-keyring.gpg' ``` ### 2. Export your ubuntu release name: On Ubuntu, you need to add our APT server entry to your sources lists, please add the following content at bottom of your /etc/apt/sources.list file - ensure to set CODENAME to your specific Ubuntu release name (e.g. jammy for Ubuntu 22.04.2): Let's get the release name: Run ```shell lsb_release -a ``` Output: ```shell No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS Release: 22.04 Codename: jammy ``` or ```shell cat /etc/os-release ``` Output: ```shell ubuntu@ip-172-31-6-194:~$ cat /etc/os-release PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS" NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION_ID="22.04" VERSION="22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)" VERSION_CODENAME=jammy ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/" SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/" BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/" PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy" UBUNTU_CODENAME=jammy ``` Let's export it into an environment variable: ```shell export CODENAME="jammy" ``` ### 3. Update your sources lists ```shell echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/fluentbit-keyring.gpg] https://packages.fluentbit.io/ubuntu/$CODENAME/ \ $CODENAME main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fluentbit.list ``` Output: ``` deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/fluentbit-keyring.gpg] https://packages.fluentbit.io/ubuntu/jammy/ jammy main ``` ### 4. Install Fluent Bit ```shell sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install fluent-bit ``` ### 5. Instruct systemd to enable the service: We will use systemd to start fluentbit service. Using systemd will allow fluentbit to start everytime the server starts ```shell sudo systemctl start fluent-bit ``` Check the status: ```shell systemctl status fluent-bit ``` It should show something like this: ```shell ubuntu@ip-172-31-1-242:~$ systemctl status fluent-bit ● fluent-bit.service - Fluent Bit Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/fluent-bit.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-07-25 00:19:53 UTC; 20s ago Docs: https://docs.fluentbit.io/manual/ Main PID: 2755 (fluent-bit) Tasks: 4 (limit: 2307) Memory: 3.0M CPU: 33ms CGroup: /system.slice/fluent-bit.service └─2755 /opt/fluent-bit/bin/fluent-bit -c //etc/fluent-bit/fluent-bit.conf ``` Enter `q` to exit the status view. The default configuration of fluent-bit is collecting metrics of CPU usage and sending the records to the standard output, you can see the outgoing data in your /var/log/syslog file. ### 6. Configure fluentbit to forward logs to OpenObserve Default configuration file is located at: /etc/fluent-bit/fluent-bit.conf Let's open the file in vi: ```shell sudo vi /etc/fluent-bit/fluent-bit.conf ``` Log are generally stored in /var/log directory. Let's add the following configuration to the file: INPUT ```shell [INPUT] Name tail Path /var/log/*.log Parser docker Tag logs.* Refresh_Interval 5 Rotate_Wait 5 Mem_Buf_Limit 5MB Skip_Long_Lines On ``` OUTPUT: Let's copy the output section from OpenObserve UI. It should look something like this: ```shell [OUTPUT] Name http Match * URI /api/justprabhat_organization_1010/default/_json Host api.openobserve.ai Port 443 tls On Format json Json_date_key _timestamp Json_date_format iso8601 HTTP_User youremail@yourdomain.com HTTP_Passwd qatj1wfZ890Q5Sk123k1 compress gzip ``` Restart the service: ```shell sudo systemctl restart fluent-bit ``` Check the status of the service using the command: ```shell systemctl status fluent-bit ``` If there are no errors, you should see something like this: ```shell ubuntu@ip-172-31-1-242:~$ systemctl status fluent-bit ● fluent-bit.service - Fluent Bit Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/fluent-bit.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-07-25 01:28:14 UTC; 38s ago Docs: https://docs.fluentbit.io/manual/ Main PID: 2926 (fluent-bit) Tasks: 6 (limit: 2307) Memory: 6.0M CPU: 95ms CGroup: /system.slice/fluent-bit.service └─2926 /opt/fluent-bit/bin/fluent-bit -c //etc/fluent-bit/fluent-bit.conf ``` If there are any errors you can check them using the command: ```shell journalctl -u fluent-bit.service ``` ### 7. Check the logs in OpenObserve Go to OpenObserve UI and check the logs. You should see the logs now. ## Conclusion We learnt how to setup fluentbit on Ubuntu and how to configure it to forward logs to OpenObserve. We also learnt how to check the logs in OpenObserve.