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Elastic Docs ›Filebeat Reference [7.14] ›Configure Filebeat

Configure modules

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Configure modules

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Using Filebeat modules is optional. You may decide to configure inputs manually if you’re using a log type that isn’t supported, or you want to use a different setup.

Filebeat modules provide a quick way to get started processing common log formats. They contain default configurations, Elasticsearch ingest node pipeline definitions, and Kibana dashboards to help you implement and deploy a log monitoring solution.

You can configure modules in the modules.d directory (recommended), or in the Filebeat configuration file.

Before running Filebeat with modules enabled, make sure you also set up the environment to use Kibana dashboards. See Quick start: installation and configuration for more information.

On systems with POSIX file permissions, all Beats configuration files are subject to ownership and file permission checks. For more information, see Config File Ownership and Permissions.

Configure modules in the modules.d directory

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The modules.d directory contains default configurations for all the modules available in Filebeat. To enable or disable specific module configurations under modules.d, run the modules enable or modules disable command. For example:

filebeat modules enable system nginx mysql

The default configurations assume that your data is in the location expected for your OS and that the behavior of the module is appropriate for your environment. To change the default behavior, configure variable settings. For a list of available settings, see the documentation under Modules.

For advanced use cases, you can also override input settings.

You can enable modules at runtime by using the --modules flag. This is useful if you’re getting started and want to try things out. Any modules specified at the command line are loaded along with any modules that are enabled in the configuration file or modules.d directory. If there’s a conflict, the configuration specified at the command line is used.

Configure modules in the filebeat.yml file

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When possible, you should use the config files in the modules.d directory.

However, configuring modules directly in the config file is a practical approach if you have upgraded from a previous version of Filebeat and don’t want to move your module configs to the modules.d directory. You can continue to configure modules in the filebeat.yml file, but you won’t be able to use the modules command to enable and disable configurations because the command requires the modules.d layout.

To enable specific modules in the filebeat.yml config file, add entries to the filebeat.modules list. Each entry in the list begins with a dash (-) and is followed by settings for that module.

The following example shows a configuration that runs the nginx,mysql, and system modules:

filebeat.modules:
- module: nginx
- module: mysql
- module: system
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