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Running Grafana Server on Ubuntu Focal Fossa (20.04 LTS)

While consolidating some of my homelab services onto a new server I had a bear of a time getting grafana-server to run on Ubuntu 20.04. The first issue was that I couldn't seem to get the service to work on a different port from the default. The second issue was that the service refused to start due to some systemd tomfoolery. I'm writing these notes in hopes that they:

  1. Help someone else
  2. Remind me what to try the next time I need to set up Grafana

Installation

Start by installing grafana through apt: 

sudo apt install grafana

At this point my installation was broken -- systemd couldn't start the service.

Change the Port

To change the port I had to edit three files:

  1. File 1: /etc/grafana/grafana.ini
  2. File 2: /usr/share/grafana/conf/defaults.ini
  3. File 3: /usr/share/grafana/conf/sample.ini

In each one:

  1. Find the line that reads ;http_port = 3000
  2. Change it to http_port = [NEW_PORT_NUMBER]
    • Note the removal of the semi-colon, which uncomments the line

Edit the Service File

For whatever reason the default service file doesn't seem to play nice with systemd on 20.04. I had to comment out a ton of lines. Here's the service file in full so it's easy to copy & paste: 

[Unit]
Description=Grafana instance
Documentation=http://docs.grafana.org
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
After=postgresql.service mariadb.service mysql.service

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/grafana-server
User=grafana
Group=grafana
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
WorkingDirectory=/usr/share/grafana
RuntimeDirectory=grafana
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0750
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/grafana-server                                                  \
                            --config=${CONF_FILE}                                   \
                            --pidfile=${PID_FILE_DIR}/grafana-server.pid            \
                            --packaging=deb                                         \
                            cfg:default.paths.logs=${LOG_DIR}                       \
                            cfg:default.paths.data=${DATA_DIR}                      \
                            cfg:default.paths.plugins=${PLUGINS_DIR}                \
                            cfg:default.paths.provisioning=${PROVISIONING_CFG_DIR}  


LimitNOFILE=10000
TimeoutStopSec=20
#CapabilityBoundingSet=
#DeviceAllow=
#LockPersonality=true
#MemoryDenyWriteExecute=false
#NoNewPrivileges=true
#PrivateDevices=true
#PrivateTmp=true
#ProtectClock=true
#ProtectControlGroups=true
#ProtectHome=true
#ProtectHostname=true
#ProtectKernelLogs=true
#ProtectKernelModules=true
#ProtectKernelTunables=true
#ProtectProc=invisible
#ProtectSystem=full
#RemoveIPC=true
#RestrictAddressFamilies=AF_INET AF_INET6 AF_UNIX
#RestrictNamespaces=true
#RestrictRealtime=true
#RestrictSUIDSGID=true
#SystemCallArchitectures=native
UMask=0027

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Restart Grafana Server

With everything reset you should be able to start up the Grafana service. I had to run these commands to clear everything up: 

$ sudo systemctl stop grafana-server.service
$ sudo systemctl reset-failed grafana-server.service
$ sudo systemctl start grafana-server.service

You can check whether the server is working by opening the server URL:PORT in a browser, or by checking it through systemd: systemctl status grafana-server.service.

If everything looks good the last thing to do is make Grafana run at startup: 

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service
Last update: 2022-12-30