Documentation

System Input Plugin

This plugin gathers general system statistics like system load, uptime or the number of users logged in. It is similar to the unix uptime command.

Introduced in: Telegraf v0.1.6 Tags: system OS support: all

Global configuration options

In addition to the plugin-specific configuration settings, plugins support additional global and plugin configuration settings. These settings are used to modify metrics, tags, and field or create aliases and configure ordering, etc. See the CONFIGURATION.md for more details.

Configuration

# Read metrics about system load & uptime
[[inputs.system]]
  # no configuration

Permissions

The n_users field requires read access to /var/run/utmp, and may require the telegraf user to be added to the utmp group on some systems. If this file does not exist n_users will be skipped.

The n_unique_users shows the count of unique usernames logged in. This way if a user has multiple sessions open/started they would only get counted once. The same requirements for n_users apply.

Metrics

  • system
    • fields:
      • load1 (float)
      • load15 (float)
      • load5 (float)
      • n_users (integer)
      • n_unique_users (integer)
      • n_cpus (integer)
      • uptime (integer, seconds)
      • uptime_format (string, deprecated in 1.10, use uptime field)

Example Output

system,host=tyrion load1=3.72,load5=2.4,load15=2.1,n_users=3i,n_cpus=4i 1483964144000000000
system,host=tyrion uptime=1249632i 1483964144000000000
system,host=tyrion uptime_format="14 days, 11:07" 1483964144000000000

Was this page helpful?

Thank you for your feedback!


New in InfluxDB 3.5

Key enhancements in InfluxDB 3.5 and the InfluxDB 3 Explorer 1.3.

See the Blog Post

InfluxDB 3.5 is now available for both Core and Enterprise, introducing custom plugin repository support, enhanced operational visibility with queryable CLI parameters and manual node management, stronger security controls, and general performance improvements.

InfluxDB 3 Explorer 1.3 brings powerful new capabilities including Dashboards (beta) for saving and organizing your favorite queries, and cache querying for instant access to Last Value and Distinct Value caches—making Explorer a more comprehensive workspace for time series monitoring and analysis.

For more information, check out:

InfluxDB Docker latest tag changing to InfluxDB 3 Core

On November 3, 2025, the latest tag for InfluxDB Docker images will point to InfluxDB 3 Core. To avoid unexpected upgrades, use specific version tags in your Docker deployments.

If using Docker to install and run InfluxDB, the latest tag will point to InfluxDB 3 Core. To avoid unexpected upgrades, use specific version tags in your Docker deployments. For example, if using Docker to run InfluxDB v2, replace the latest version tag with a specific version tag in your Docker pull command–for example:

docker pull influxdb:2