Daemon configuration

The daemon configuration file is read from /etc/netdata/netdata.conf.

Depending on your installation method, Netdata will have been installed either directly under /, or under /opt/netdata. The paths mentioned here and in the documentation in general assume that your installation is under /. If it is not, you will find the exact same paths under /opt/netdata as well. (i.e. /etc/netdata will be /opt/netdata/etc/netdata).

This config file is not needed by default. Netdata works fine out of the box without it. But it does allow you to adapt the general behavior of Netdata, in great detail. You can find all these settings, with their default values, by accessing the URL https://netdata.server.hostname:19999/netdata.conf. For example check the configuration file of netdata.firehol.org. HTTP access to this file is limited by default to private IPs, via the web server access lists.

netdata.conf has sections stated with [section]. You will see the following sections:

1. [global] to configure the Netdata daemon.
2. [db] to configure the database of Netdata.
3. [directories] to configure the directories used by Netdata.
4. [logs] to configure the Netdata logging.
5. [environment variables] to configure the environment variables used Netdata.
6. [sqlite] to configure the Netdata daemon SQLite settings.
7. [ml] to configure settings for machine learning.
8. [health] to configure general settings for health monitoring.
9. [web] to configure the web server.
10. [registry] for the Netdata registry.
11. [global statistics] for the Netdata registry.
12. [statsd] for the general settings of the stats.d.plugin.
13. [plugins] to configure which collectors to use and PATH settings.
14. [plugin:NAME] sections for each collector plugin, under the comment Per plugin configuration.

The configuration file is a name = value dictionary. Netdata will not complain if you set options unknown to it. When you check the running configuration by accessing the URL /netdata.conf on your Netdata server, Netdata will add a comment on settings it does not currently use.

Applying changes

After netdata.conf has been modified, Netdata needs to be restarted for changes to apply:

sudo systemctl restart netdata

If the above does not work, try the following:

sudo killall netdata; sleep 10; sudo netdata

Please note that your data history will be lost if you have modified history parameter in section [global].

Sections

[global] section options

setting	default	info
process scheduling policy	keep	See Netdata process scheduling policy
OOM score	0
glibc malloc arena max for plugins	1	See Virtual memory.
glibc malloc arena max for Netdata	1	See Virtual memory.
hostname	auto-detected	The hostname of the computer running Netdata.
host access prefix	empty	This is used in docker environments where /proc, /sys, etc have to be accessed via another path. You may also have to set SYS_PTRACE capability on the docker for this work. Check issue 43.
timezone	auto-detected	The timezone retrieved from the environment variable
run as user	netdata	The user Netdata will run as.
pthread stack size	auto-detected

[db] section options

setting	default	info
mode	dbengine	dbengine: The default for long-term metrics storage with efficient RAM and disk usage. Can be extended with dbengine page cache size MB and dbengine disk space MB. ram: The round-robin database will be temporary and it will be lost when Netdata exits. alloc: Similar to ram, but can significantly reduce memory usage, when combined with a low retention and does not support KSM. none: Disables the database at this host, and disables health monitoring entirely, as that requires a database of metrics. Not to be used together with streaming.
retention	3600	Used with mode = ram/alloc, not the default mode = dbengine. This number reflects the number of entries the netdata daemon will by default keep in memory for each chart dimension. Check Memory Requirements for more information.
storage tiers	1	The number of storage tiers you want to have in your dbengine. Check the tiering mechanism in the dbengine's reference. You can have up to 5 tiers of data (including the Tier 0). This number ranges between 1 and 5.
dbengine page cache size MB	32	Determines the amount of RAM in MiB that is dedicated to caching for Tier 0 Netdata metric values.
dbengine tier N page cache size MB	32	Determines the amount of RAM in MiB that is dedicated for caching Netdata metric values of the N tier. N belongs to [1..4]
dbengine disk space MB	256	Determines the amount of disk space in MiB that is dedicated to storing Tier 0 Netdata metric values and all related metadata describing them. This option is available only for legacy configuration (Agent v1.23.2 and prior).
dbengine multihost disk space MB	256	Same functionality as dbengine disk space MB, but includes support for storing metrics streamed to a parent node by its children. Can be used in single-node environments as well. This setting is only for Tier 0 metrics.
dbengine tier N multihost disk space MB	256	Same functionality as dbengine multihost disk space MB, but stores metrics of the N tier (both parent node and its children). Can be used in single-node environments as well. N belongs to [1..4]
update every	1	The frequency in seconds, for data collection. For more information see the performance guide. These metrics stored as Tier 0 data. Explore the tiering mechanism in the dbengine's reference.
dbengine tier N update every iterations	60	The down sampling value of each tier from the previous one. For each Tier, the greater by one Tier has N (equal to 60 by default) less data points of any metric it collects. This setting can take values from 2 up to 255. N belongs to [1..4]
dbengine tier N back fill	New	Specifies the strategy of recreating missing data on each Tier from the exact lower Tier. New: Sees the latest point on each Tier and save new points to it only if the exact lower Tier has available points for it's observation window (dbengine tier N update every iterations window). none: No back filling is applied. N belongs to [1..4]
memory deduplication (ksm)	yes	When set to yes, Netdata will offer its in-memory round robin database and the dbengine page cache to kernel same page merging (KSM) for deduplication. For more information check Memory Deduplication - Kernel Same Page Merging - KSM
cleanup obsolete charts after secs	3600	See monitoring ephemeral containers, also sets the timeout for cleaning up obsolete dimensions
gap when lost iterations above	1
cleanup orphan hosts after secs	3600	How long to wait until automatically removing from the DB a remote Netdata host (child) that is no longer sending data.
delete obsolete charts files	yes	See monitoring ephemeral containers, also affects the deletion of files for obsolete dimensions
delete orphan hosts files	yes	Set to no to disable non-responsive host removal.
enable zero metrics	no	Set to yes to show charts when all their metrics are zero.

Info

The multiplication of all the enabled tiers dbengine tier N update every iterations values must be less than 65535.

[directories] section options

setting	default	info
config	/etc/netdata	The directory configuration files are kept.
stock config	/usr/lib/netdata/conf.d
log	/var/log/netdata	The directory in which the log files are kept.
web	/usr/share/netdata/web	The directory the web static files are kept.
cache	/var/cache/netdata	The directory the memory database will be stored if and when Netdata exits. Netdata will re-read the database when it will start again, to continue from the same point.
lib	/var/lib/netdata	Contains the alert log and the Netdata instance GUID.
home	/var/cache/netdata	Contains the db files for the collected metrics.
lock	/var/lib/netdata/lock	Contains the data collectors lock files.
plugins	"/usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d" "/etc/netdata/custom-plugins.d"	The directory plugin programs are kept. This setting supports multiple directories, space separated. If any directory path contains spaces, enclose it in single or double quotes.
health config	/etc/netdata/health.d	The directory containing the user alert configuration files, to override the stock configurations
stock health config	/usr/lib/netdata/conf.d/health.d	Contains the stock alert configuration files for each collector
registry	/opt/netdata/var/lib/netdata/registry	Contains the registry database and GUID that uniquely identifies each Netdata Agent

[logs] section options

setting	default	info
debug flags	0x0000000000000000	Bitmap of debug options to enable. For more information check Tracing Options.
debug	/var/log/netdata/debug.log	The filename to save debug information. This file will not be created if debugging is not enabled. You can also set it to syslog to send the debug messages to syslog, or none to disable this log. For more information check Tracing Options.
error	/var/log/netdata/error.log	The filename to save error messages for Netdata daemon and all plugins (stderr is sent here for all Netdata programs, including the plugins). You can also set it to syslog to send the errors to syslog, or none to disable this log.
access	/var/log/netdata/access.log	The filename to save the log of web clients accessing Netdata charts. You can also set it to syslog to send the access log to syslog, or none to disable this log.
facility	daemon	A facility keyword is used to specify the type of system that is logging the message.
errors flood protection period	1200	Length of period (in sec) during which the number of errors should not exceed the errors to trigger flood protection.
errors to trigger flood protection	200	Number of errors written to the log in errors flood protection period sec before flood protection is activated.
severity level	info	Controls which log messages are logged, with error being the most important. Supported values: info and error.

[environment variables] section options

setting	default	info
TZ	:/etc/localtime	Where to find the timezone
PATH	auto-detected	Specifies the directories to be searched to find a command
PYTHONPATH		Used to set a custom python path

[sqlite] section options

setting	default	info
auto vacuum	INCREMENTAL	The auto-vacuum status in the database
synchronous	NORMAL	The setting of the "synchronous" flag
journal mode	WAL	The journal mode for databases
temp store	MEMORY	Used to determine where temporary tables and indices are stored
journal size limit	16777216	Used to set a new limit in bytes for the database
cache size	-2000	Used to suggest the maximum number of database disk pages that SQLite will hold in memory at once per open database file

[health] section options

This section controls the general behavior of the health monitoring capabilities of Netdata.

Specific alerts are configured in per-collector config files under the health.d directory. For more info, see health monitoring.

Alert notifications are configured in health_alarm_notify.conf.

setting	default	info
enabled	yes	Set to no to disable all alerts and notifications
in memory max health log entries	1000	Size of the alert history held in RAM
script to execute on alarm	/usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/alarm-notify.sh	The script that sends alert notifications. Note that in versions before 1.16, the plugins.d directory may be installed in a different location in certain OSs (e.g. under /usr/lib/netdata).
run at least every seconds	10	Controls how often all alert conditions should be evaluated.
postpone alarms during hibernation for seconds	60	Prevents false alerts. May need to be increased if you get alerts during hibernation.
health log history	432000	Specifies the history of alert events (in seconds) kept in the agent's sqlite database.
enabled alarms	*	Defines which alerts to load from both user and stock directories. This is a simple pattern list of alert or template names. Can be used to disable specific alerts. For example, enabled alarms = !oom_kill * will load all alerts except oom_kill.

[web] section options

Refer to the web server documentation

[plugins] section options

In this section you will see be a boolean (yes/no) option for each plugin (e.g. tc, cgroups, apps, proc etc.). Note that the configuration options in this section for the orchestrator plugins python.d and charts.d control all the modules written for that orchestrator. For instance, setting python.d = no means that all Python modules under collectors/python.d.plugin will be disabled.

Additionally, there will be the following options:

setting	default	info
enable running new plugins	yes	When set to yes, Netdata will enable detected plugins, even if they are not configured explicitly. Setting this to no will only enable plugins explicitly configured in this file with a yes
check for new plugins every	60	The time in seconds to check for new plugins in the plugins directory. This allows having other applications dynamically creating plugins for Netdata.
checks	no	This is a debugging plugin for the internal latency

[registry] section options

To understand what this section is and how it should be configured, please refer to the registry documentation.

Per-plugin configuration

The configuration options for plugins appear in sections following the pattern [plugin:NAME].

Internal plugins

Most internal plugins will provide additional options. Check Internal Plugins for more information.

Please note, that by default Netdata will enable monitoring metrics for disks, memory, and network only when they are not zero. If they are constantly zero they are ignored. Metrics that will start having values, after Netdata is started, will be detected and charts will be automatically added to the dashboard (a refresh of the dashboard is needed for them to appear though). Use yes instead of auto in plugin configuration sections to enable these charts permanently. You can also set the enable zero metrics option to yes in the [global] section which enables charts with zero metrics for all internal Netdata plugins.

External plugins

External plugins will have only 2 options at netdata.conf:

setting	default	info
update every	the value of [global].update every setting	The frequency in seconds the plugin should collect values. For more information check the performance guide.
command options	-	Additional command line options to pass to the plugin.

External plugins that need additional configuration may support a dedicated file in /etc/netdata. Check their documentation.