Installing Graphite

Dependencies

Graphite renders graphs using the Cairo graphics library. This adds dependencies on several graphics-related libraries not typically found on a server. If you’re installing from source you can use the check-dependencies.py script to see if the dependencies have been met or not.

Basic Graphite requirements:

• a UNIX-like Operating System
• Python 2.6 or greater
• cairocffi
• Django 1.4 or greater
• django-tagging 0.3.1 or greater
• pytz
• fontconfig and at least one font package (a system package usually)
• A WSGI server and web server. Popular choices are: - Apache with mod_wsgi - gunicorn with nginx - uWSGI with nginx

Additionally, the Graphite webapp and Carbon require the whisper database library which is part of the Graphite project.

There are also several other dependencies required for additional features:

• Render caching: memcached and python-memcache
• LDAP authentication: python-ldap (for LDAP authentication support in the webapp)
• AMQP support: txamqp
• RRD support: python-rrdtool
• Dependant modules for additional database support (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc). See Django database install instructions and the Django database documentation for details

See also

On some systems it is necessary to install fonts for Cairo to use. If the webapp is running but all graphs return as broken images, this may be why.

• https://answers.launchpad.net/graphite/+question/38833
• https://answers.launchpad.net/graphite/+question/133390
• https://answers.launchpad.net/graphite/+question/127623

Fulfilling Dependencies

Most current Linux distributions have all of the requirements available in the base packages. RHEL based distributions may require the EPEL repository for requirements. Python module dependencies can be install with pip rather than system packages if desired or if using a Python version that differs from the system default. Some modules (such as cairocffi) may require library development headers to be available.

Default Installation Layout

Graphite defaults to an installation layout that puts the entire install in its own directory: /opt/graphite

Whisper

Whisper is installed Python’s system-wide site-packages directory with Whisper’s utilities installed in the bin dir of the system’s default prefix (generally /usr/bin/).

Carbon and Graphite-web

Carbon and Graphite-web are installed in /opt/graphite/ with the following layout:

• bin/

• conf/

• lib/

  Carbon PYTHONPATH

• storage/

  • log

    Log directory for Carbon and Graphite-web

  • rrd

    Location for RRD files to be read

  • whisper

    Location for Whisper data files to be stored and read

• webapp/

  Graphite-web PYTHONPATH

  • graphite/

    Location of local_settings.py

  • content/

    Graphite-web static content directory

Installing Graphite

Several installation options exist:

• Installing From Source
  • Installing in the Default Location
  • Installing Carbon in a Custom Location
  • Installing Graphite-web in a Custom Location
• Installing From Pip
  • Installing in the Default Location
  • Installing Carbon in a Custom Location
  • Installing Graphite-web in a Custom Location
• Installing in Virtualenv
  • Installing in the Default Location
  • Installing in a Custom Location
  • Running Carbon Within Virtualenv
  • Running Graphite-web Within Virtualenv
• Installing From Synthesize

Initial Configuration

• Webapp Database Setup
• Graphite-web’s local_settings.py
  • Config File Location
  • General Settings
  • Filesystem Paths
  • Configure Webserver (Apache)
  • Email Configuration
  • Authentication Configuration
  • Dashboard Authorization Configuration
  • Database Configuration
  • Cluster Configuration
  • Additional Django Settings
• Configuring Carbon
  • carbon.conf
  • storage-schemas.conf
  • storage-aggregation.conf
  • relay-rules.conf
  • aggregation-rules.conf
  • rewrite-rules.conf
  • whitelist and blacklist

Help! It didn’t work!

If you run into any issues with Graphite, please to post a question to our Questions forum on Launchpad or join us on IRC in #graphite on FreeNode.

Post-Install Tasks

Configuring Carbon

Once you’ve installed everything you will need to create some basic configuration. Initially none of the config files are created by the installer but example files are provided. Simply copy the .example files and customize.

Administering Carbon

Once Carbon is configured, you need to start it up.

Feeding In Your Data

Once it’s up and running, you need to feed it some data.

Configuring The Webapp

With data getting into carbon, you probably want to look at graphs of it. So now we turn our attention to the webapp.

Administering The Webapp

Once its configured you’ll need to get it running.

Using the Composer

Now that the webapp is running, you probably want to learn how to use it.

Windows Users

Despair Not! Even though running Graphite on Windows is completely unsupported (we fear that handling the escaping of paths in the regexes would result only in jibbering madness, and life is just too short; pull requests happily considered!), you are not completely out of luck. There are some solutions that make it easier for you to run a UNIX VM within your Windows box. The Installing via Synthesize article will help you set up a Vagrant VM that will run Graphite. In order to leverage this, you will need to install Vagrant.