Logging in InfluxDB

InfluxDB writes log output, by default, to stderr. Depending on your use case, this log information can be written to another location.

Running InfluxDB directly

If you run InfluxDB directly, using influxd, all logs will be written to stderr. You may redirect this log output as you would any output to stderr like so:

influxd 2>$HOME/my_log_file

Launched as a service

sysvinit

If InfluxDB was installed using a pre-built package, and then launched as a service, stderr is redirected to /var/log/influxdb/influxd.log, and all log data will be written to that file. You can override this location by setting the variable STDERR in the file /etc/default/influxdb.

Note: On macOS the logs, by default, are stored in the file /usr/local/var/log/influxdb.log

For example, if /etc/default/influxdb contains:

STDERR=/dev/null

all log data will be discarded. You can similarly direct output to stdout by setting STDOUT in the same file. Output to stdout is sent to /dev/null by default when InfluxDB is launched as a service.

InfluxDB must be restarted to pick up any changes to /etc/default/influxdb.

systemd

Starting with version 1.0, InfluxDB on systemd systems will no longer write files to /var/log/influxdb by default, and will now use the system configured default for logging (usually journald). On most systems, the logs will be directed to the systemd journal and can be accessed with the command:

sudo journalctl -u influxdb.service

Please consult the systemd journald documentation for configuring journald.

Using logrotate

You can use logrotate to rotate the log files generated by InfluxDB on systems where logs are written to flat files. If using the package install on a sysvinit system, the config file for logrotate is installed in /etc/logrotate.d. You can view the file here.