This functionality is experimental and may be changed or removed completely in a future release. Elastic will take a best effort approach to fix any issues, but experimental features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.
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Elastic Docs ›Journalbeat Reference [7.2] ›Setting up and running Journalbeat

Running Journalbeat on Docker

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Running Journalbeat on Docker

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Docker images for Journalbeat are available from the Elastic Docker registry. The base image is centos:7.

A list of all published Docker images and tags is available at www.docker.elastic.co.

These images are free to use under the Elastic license. They contain open source and free commercial features and access to paid commercial features. Start a 30-day trial to try out all of the paid commercial features. See the Subscriptions page for information about Elastic license levels.

Pulling the image

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Obtaining Beats for Docker is as simple as issuing a docker pull command against the Elastic Docker registry.

docker pull docker.elastic.co/beats/journalbeat:7.2.1

Alternatively, you can download other Docker images that contain only features available under the Apache 2.0 license. To download the images, go to www.docker.elastic.co.

Run the Journalbeat setup

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Running Journalbeat with the setup command will create the index pattern and load visualizations and machine learning jobs. Run this command:

docker run \
docker.elastic.co/beats/journalbeat:7.2.1 \
setup -E setup.kibana.host=kibana:5601 \
-E output.elasticsearch.hosts=["elasticsearch:9200"]

Substitute your Kibana and Elasticsearch hosts and ports.

If you are using the hosted Elasticsearch Service in Elastic Cloud, replace the -E output.elasticsearch.hosts line with the Cloud ID and elastic password using this syntax:

 
-E cloud.id=<Cloud ID from Elasticsearch Service> \
-E cloud.auth=elastic:<elastic password>

Configure Journalbeat on Docker

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The Docker image provides several methods for configuring Journalbeat. The conventional approach is to provide a configuration file via a volume mount, but it’s also possible to create a custom image with your configuration included.

Example configuration file

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Download this example configuration file as a starting point:

curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/beats/7.2/deploy/docker/journalbeat.docker.yml

Volume-mounted configuration

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One way to configure Journalbeat on Docker is to provide journalbeat.docker.yml via a volume mount. With docker run, the volume mount can be specified like this.

Make sure you include the path to the host’s journal. The path might be /var/log/journal or /run/log/journal.

sudo docker run -d \
  --name=journalbeat \
  --user=root \
  --volume="/var/log/journal:/var/log/journal" \
  --volume="/etc/machine-id:/etc/machine-id" \
  --volume="/run/systemd:/run/systemd" \
  --volume="/etc/hostname:/etc/hostname:ro" \
  docker.elastic.co/beats/journalbeat:7.2.1 journalbeat -e -strict.perms=false \
  -E output.elasticsearch.hosts=["elasticsearch:9200"]

Substitute your Elasticsearch hosts and ports.

If you are using the hosted Elasticsearch Service in Elastic Cloud, replace the -E output.elasticsearch.hosts line with the Cloud ID and elastic password using the syntax shown earlier.

Customize your configuration

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The journalbeat.docker.yml downloaded earlier should be customized for your environment. See Configuring Journalbeat for more details. Edit the configuration file and customize it to match your environment then re-deploy your Journalbeat container.

Custom image configuration

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It’s possible to embed your Journalbeat configuration in a custom image. Here is an example Dockerfile to achieve this:

FROM docker.elastic.co/beats/journalbeat:7.2.1
COPY journalbeat.yml /usr/share/journalbeat/journalbeat.yml
USER root
RUN chown root:journalbeat /usr/share/journalbeat/journalbeat.yml
USER journalbeat
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