# GrafanaPromtail

GrafanaPromtail is a self-hosted monitoring & logging app. Promtail is an agent which ships the contents of local logs to a private Loki instance or Grafana Cloud. It is open source and self-hosted, installable on Docker Hub and Unraid.

Canonical page: https://ourlocalhost.com/app/3/grafanapromtail

## Description

Promtail is an agent which ships the contents of local logs to a private Loki instance or Grafana Cloud. It is usually deployed to every machine that has applications needed to be monitored. It primarily: Discovers targets Attaches labels to log streams Pushes them to the Loki instance. Currently, Promtail can tail logs from two sources: local log files and the systemd journal (on AMD64 machines only). Promtail supports receiving IETF Syslog (RFC5424) messages from a tcp stream: (https://github.com/grafana/loki/blob/v1.5.0/docs/clients/promtail/scraping.md#syslog-receiver) NOTE: Download the config.yml file from https://github.com/natcoso9955/Unraid-docker/blob/master/configs/promtail/config.yml before you start the container. Will need to be placed into your Host Path 1. More info: https://github.com/grafana/loki/blob/master/docs/clients/promtail/configuration.md

## Platform availability

Available on 1 of 9 platforms: Unraid.

## Health score

52/100 (Fair), based on 2 of 4 factors.
- Easy to install: 20 (1 install platform, Docker image)
- Light to run: 95 (512 MB minimum RAM, runs on ARM)

## Links

- Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/grafana/promtail/
- Unraid: https://ca.unraid.net/apps/grafanapromtail-0ngyzx30g4qptf?q=GrafanaPromtail

## Common questions

### Do I have to move away from Promtail to send logs to Loki?

Yes, if you are currently using Promtail, you must migrate to Alloy or another supported client. The Alloy migration documentation includes a tool that converts a Promtail configuration to an Alloy configuration with a single command.

### What Promtail issue was reported on a bare-metal Loki setup?

A bare-metal Grafana Loki and Promtail setup was reported with pipeline_stages not working. The post frames it as a specific configuration issue to troubleshoot.

### Is there a Docker-focused example for visualizing logs with Promtail and Loki?

The source covers a log visualization setup using Grafana, Loki, Promtail, and Docker. It is described as helpful for building a setup around Dockerized services.

### Can logs be sent from Grafana Agent to Promtail and then to Loki in a self-hosted Grafana setup?

A community user on Grafana v10 described the goal of sending logs via Grafana Agent to Promtail and then to Loki. The snippet shows the intended flow but does not provide a confirmed solution.

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Source: Our Local Host (https://ourlocalhost.com/app/3/grafanapromtail), the self-hosted and open-source app directory.