IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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Heartbeat and systemd

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Heartbeat and systemd

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The DEB and RPM packages include a service unit for Linux systems with systemd. On these systems, you can manage Heartbeat by using the usual systemd commands.

Start and stop Heartbeat

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Use systemctl to start or stop Heartbeat:

systemctl start heartbeat-elastic

systemctl stop heartbeat-elastic

By default, the Heartbeat service starts automatically when the system boots. To enable or disable auto start use:

systemctl enable heartbeat-elastic

systemctl disable heartbeat-elastic

Heartbeat status and logs

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To get the service status, use systemctl:

systemctl status heartbeat-elastic

Logs are stored by default in journald. To view the Logs, use journalctl:

journalctl -u heartbeat-elastic.service

The unit file included in the packages sets the -e flag by default. This flag makes Heartbeat log to stderr and disables other log outputs. Systemd stores all output sent to stderr in journald.

Customize systemd unit for Heartbeat

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The systemd service unit file includes environment variables that you can override to change the default options.

Variable	Description	Default value
BEAT_LOG_OPTS	Log options	`-e`
BEAT_CONFIG_OPTS	Flags for configuration file path	`-c /etc/heartbeat/heartbeat.yml`
BEAT_PATH_OPTS	Other paths	`-path.home /usr/share/heartbeat -path.config /etc/heartbeat -path.data /var/lib/heartbeat -path.logs /var/log/heartbeat`

To override these variables, create a drop-in unit file in the /etc/systemd/system/heartbeat-elastic.service.d directory.

For example a file with the following content placed in /etc/systemd/system/heartbeat-elastic.service.d/debug.conf would override BEAT_LOG_OPTS to enable debug for Elasticsearch output.

[Service]
Environment="BEAT_LOG_OPTS=-e -d elasticsearch"

To change the logging output from the Heartbeat configuration file, empty the environment variable. For example:

[Service]
Environment="BEAT_LOG_OPTS="

To apply your changes, reload the systemd configuration and restart the service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart heartbeat-elastic

It is recommended that you use a configuration management tool to include drop-in unit files. If you need to add a drop-in manually, use systemctl edit heartbeat-elastic.service.

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