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Install Netdata with kickstart.sh

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kickstart.sh is the recommended way of installing Netdata.

This script works on all Linux distributions and macOS environments, by detecting the optimal method of installing Netdata directly to the operating system.

Installation​

💡 Tip

If you are unsure whether you want nightly or stable releases, read the related section of our Documentation, detailing the pros and cons of each release type.

To install Netdata, run the following as your normal user:

wget -O /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh https://get.netdata.cloud/kickstart.sh && sh /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh

📑 Note

If you plan to also connect the node to Netdata Cloud, make sure to replace YOUR_CLAIM_TOKEN with the claim token of your space, and YOUR_ROOM_ID with the ID of the Room you are willing to connect the node to.

Verify script integrity​

To use md5sum to verify the integrity of the kickstart.sh script you will download using the one-line command above, run the following:

[ "2d9d5910c018f9c3b5d12f77cdc95c75" = "$(curl -Ss https://get.netdata.cloud/kickstart.sh | md5sum | cut -d ' ' -f 1)" ] && echo "OK, VALID" || echo "FAILED, INVALID"

If the script is valid, this command will return OK, VALID.

What does kickstart.sh do?​

The kickstart.sh script does the following after being downloaded and run using sh:

  • Determines what platform you are running on.
  • Checks for an existing installation, and if found updates that instead of creating a new install.
  • Attempts to install Netdata using our official native binary packages.
  • If there are no official native binary packages for your system (or installing that way failed), tries to install using a static build of Netdata if one is available.
  • If no static build is available, installs required dependencies and then attempts to install by building Netdata locally (by downloading the sources and building them directly).
  • Installs netdata-updater.sh to cron.daily, so your Netdata installation will be updated with new nightly versions, unless you override that with an optional parameter.
  • Prints a message whether installation succeeded or failed for QA purposes.

Start stop or restart the Netdata Agent​

You will most often need to restart the Agent to load new or edited configuration files.

Note
Stopping or restarting the Netdata Agent will cause gaps in stored metrics until the netdata process initiates collectors and the database engine.

You do not need to restart the Netdata Agent between changes to health configuration files, see the relevant section on reloading health configuration.

Using systemctl or service​

This is the recommended way to start, stop, or restart the Netdata daemon.

  • To start Netdata, run sudo systemctl start netdata.
  • To stop Netdata, run sudo systemctl stop netdata.
  • To restart Netdata, run sudo systemctl restart netdata.

If the above commands fail, or you know that you're using a non-systemd system, try using the service command:

  • Starting: sudo service netdata start.
  • Stopping: sudo service netdata stop.
  • Restarting: sudo service netdata restart.

Using the netdata command​

Use the netdata command, typically located at /usr/sbin/netdata, to start the Netdata daemon:

sudo netdata

If you start the daemon this way, close it with sudo killall netdata.

Shutdown using netdatacli​

The Netdata Agent also comes with a CLI tool capable of performing shutdowns. Start the Agent back up using your preferred method listed above.

sudo netdatacli shutdown-agent

Starting Netdata at boot​

In the system directory you can find scripts and configurations for the various distros.

systemd​

The installer already installs netdata.service if it detects a systemd system.

To install netdata.service by hand, run:

# stop Netdata
killall netdata

# copy netdata.service to systemd
cp system/netdata.service /etc/systemd/system/

# let systemd know there is a new service
systemctl daemon-reload

# enable Netdata at boot
systemctl enable netdata

# start Netdata
systemctl start netdata

init.d​

In the system directory you can find netdata-lsb. Copy it to the proper place according to your distribution's documentation. For Ubuntu, this can be done via running the following commands as root.

# copy the Netdata startup file to /etc/init.d
cp system/netdata-lsb /etc/init.d/netdata

# make sure it is executable
chmod +x /etc/init.d/netdata

# enable it
update-rc.d netdata defaults

openrc / Gentoo Linux​

In the system directory you can find netdata-openrc. Copy it to the proper place according to your distribution documentation.

CentOS / Red Hat Enterprise Linux​

For older versions of RHEL/CentOS that don't have systemd, an init script is included in the system directory. This can be installed by running the following commands as root.

# copy the Netdata startup file to /etc/init.d
cp system/netdata-init-d /etc/init.d/netdata

# make sure it is executable
chmod +x /etc/init.d/netdata

# enable it
chkconfig --add netdata

There have been some recent work on the init script, see the following PR https://github.com/netdata/netdata/pull/403

Other operating systems​

You can start Netdata by running it from /etc/rc.local or your system's equivalent.

Optional parameters to alter your installation​

The kickstart.sh script accepts a number of optional parameters to control how the installation process works:

destination directory​

  • --install-prefix Specify an installation prefix for local builds (by default, we use a sane prefix based on the type of system).
  • --old-install-prefix Specify the custom local build's installation prefix that should be removed.

interactivity​

The script automatically detects if it is running interactively, on a user's terminal, or headless in a CI/CD environment. These are options related to overriding this behavior.

  • --non-interactive or --dont-wait Don’t prompt for anything and assume yes whenever possible, overriding any automatic detection of an interactive run. Use this option when installing Netdata agent with a provisioning tool or in CI/CD.
  • --interactive Act as if running interactively, even if automatic detection indicates a run is non-interactive.

release channel​

By default, the script installs the nightly channel of Netdata, providing you with the most recent Netdata. For production systems where stability is more important than new features, we recommend using the stable channel.

  • --release-channel Specify a particular release channel to install from. Currently supported release channels are:
    • nightly: Installs a nightly build (this is currently the default).
    • stable: Installs a stable release.
    • default: Explicitly request whatever the current default is.
  • --nightly-channel Synonym for --release-channel nightly.
  • --stable-channel Synonym for --release-channel stable.
  • --install-version Specify the exact version of Netdata to install.

install type​

By default the script will prefer native builds when they are available, and then static builds. It will fallback to build from source when all others are not available.

  • --native-only Only install if native binary packages are available. It fails otherwise.
  • --static-only Only install if a static build is available. It fails otherwise. When installing a static build, the parameter --static-install-options can provide additional options to pass to the static installer code.
  • --build-only Only install using a local build. It fails otherwise. When it builds from source, the parameter --local-build-options can be used to give additional build options.

automatic updates​

By default the script installs a cron job to automatically update Netdata to the latest version of the release channel used.

  • --auto-update Enable automatic updates (this is the default).
  • --no-updates Disable automatic updates (not recommended).

By default, the kickstart script will provide a Netdata agent installation that can potentially communicate with Netdata Cloud, if of course the Netdata agent is further configured to do so.

  • --claim-token Specify a unique claiming token associated with your Space in Netdata Cloud to be used to connect to the node after the install. This will enable, connect and claim the Netdata agent, to Netdata Cloud.
  • --claim-url Specify a URL to use when connecting to the cloud. Defaults to https://app.netdata.cloud. Use this option to change the Netdata Cloud URL to point to your Netdata Cloud installation.
  • --claim-rooms Specify a comma-separated list of tokens for each Room this node should appear in.
  • --claim-proxy Specify a proxy to use when connecting to the cloud in the form of http://[user:pass@]host:ip for an HTTP(S) proxy. See connecting through a proxy for details.
  • --claim-only If there is an existing install, only try to claim it without attempting to update it. If there is no existing install, install and claim Netdata normally.

anonymous telemetry​

By default, the agent is sending anonymous telemetry data to help us take identify the most common operating systems and the configurations Netdata agents run. We use this information to prioritize our efforts towards what is most commonly used by our community.

  • --disable-telemetry Disable anonymous statistics.

reinstalling​

  • --reinstall If there is an existing install, reinstall it instead of trying to update it. If there is not an existing install, install netdata normally.
  • --reinstall-even-if-unsafe If there is an existing install, reinstall it instead of trying to update it, even if doing so is known to potentially break things (for example, if we cannot detect what type of installation it is). If there is not an existing install, install Netdata normally.
  • --reinstall-clean If there is an existing install, uninstall it before trying to install Netdata. Fails if there is no existing install.

uninstall​

  • --uninstall Uninstall an existing installation of Netdata. Fails if there is no existing install.

other options​

  • --dry-run Show what the installer would do, but don’t actually do any of it.
  • --dont-start-it Don’t auto-start the daemon after installing. This parameter is not guaranteed to work.
  • --distro-override Override the distro detection logic and assume the system is using a specific Linux distribution and release. Takes a single argument consisting of the values of the ID, VERSION_ID, and VERSION_CODENAME fields from /etc/os-release for the desired distribution.

The following options are mutually exclusive and specify special operations other than trying to install Netdata normally or update an existing install:

  • --repositories-only Only install repository configuration packages instead of doing a full install of Netdata. Automatically sets --native-only.
  • --prepare-offline-install-source Instead of installing the agent, prepare a directory that can be used to install on another system without needing to download anything. See our offline installation documentation for more info.

environment variables​

Additionally, the following environment variables may be used to further customize how the script runs (most users should not need to use special values for any of these):

  • TMPDIR: Used to specify where to put temporary files. On most systems, the default we select automatically should be fine. The user running the script needs to both be able to write files to the temporary directory, and run files from that location.
  • ROOTCMD: Used to specify a command to use to run another command with root privileges if needed. By default we try to use sudo, doas, or pkexec (in that order of preference), but if you need special options for one of those to work, or have a different tool to do the same thing on your system, you can specify it here.
  • DISABLE_TELEMETRY: If set to a value other than 0, behave as if --disable-telemetry was specified.

Native packages​

We publish official DEB/RPM packages for a number of common Linux distributions as part of our releases and nightly builds. These packages are available for 64-bit x86 systems. Depending on the distribution and release they may also be available for 32-bit x86, ARMv7, and AArch64 systems. If a native package is available, it will be used as the default installation method. This allows you to handle Netdata updates as part of your usual system update procedure.

If you want to enforce the usage of native packages and have the installer return a failure if they are not available, you can do so by adding --native-only to the options you pass to the installer.

Static builds​

We publish pre-built static builds of Netdata for Linux systems. Currently, these are published for 64-bit x86, ARMv7, AArch64, and POWER8+ hardware. These static builds are able to operate in a mostly self-contained manner and only require a POSIX compliant shell and a supported init system. These static builds install under /opt/netdata. If you are on a platform which we provide static builds for but do not provide native packages for, a static build will be used by default for installation.

If you want to enforce the usage of a static build and have the installer return a failure if one is not available, you can do so by adding --static-only to the options you pass to the installer.

Local builds​

For systems which do not have available native packages or static builds, we support building Netdata locally on the system it will be installed on. When using this approach, the installer will attempt to install any required dependencies for building Netdata, though this may not always work correctly.

If you want to enforce the usage of a local build (perhaps because you require a custom installation prefix, which is not supported with native packages or static builds), you can do so by adding --build-only to the options you pass to the installer.


Do you have any feedback for this page? If so, you can open a new issue on our netdata/learn repository.