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Elastic Docs ›Packetbeat Reference [5.6] ›Configuring Packetbeat ›Configuration Options (Reference)

General

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General

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The general section of the packetbeat.yml config file contains configuration options for the Beat and some general settings that control its behaviour.

Here is an example configuration:

name: "my-shipper"
tags: ["service-X", "web-tier"]

General Options

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You can specify the following options:

name

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The name of the Beat. If this option is empty, the hostname of the server is used. The name is included as the beat.name field in each published transaction. You can use the name to group all transactions sent by a single Beat.

Example:

name: "my-shipper"

tags

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A list of tags that the Beat includes in the tags field of each published transaction. Tags make it easy to group servers by different logical properties. For example, if you have a cluster of web servers, you can add the "webservers" tag to the Beat on each server, and then use filters and queries in the Kibana web interface to get visualisations for the whole group of servers.

Example:

tags: ["my-service", "hardware", "test"]

fields

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Optional fields that you can specify to add additional information to the output. Fields can be scalar values, arrays, dictionaries, or any nested combination of these. By default, the fields that you specify here will be grouped under a fields sub-dictionary in the output document. To store the custom fields as top-level fields, set the fields_under_root option to true.

Example:

fields: {project: "myproject", instance-id: "574734885120952459"}

fields_under_root

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If this option is set to true, the custom fields are stored as top-level fields in the output document instead of being grouped under a fields sub-dictionary. If the custom field names conflict with other field names, then the custom fields overwrite the other fields.

Example:

fields_under_root: true
fields:
  instance_id: i-10a64379
  region: us-east-1

refresh_topology_freq

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Deprecated in 5.0.0.

The refresh interval of the topology map in seconds. In other words, this setting specifies how often each Beat publishes its IP addresses to the topology map. The default is 10 seconds.

topology_expire

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Deprecated in 5.0.0.

The expiration time for the topology in seconds. This is useful in case a Beat stops publishing its IP addresses. The IP addresses are removed automatically from the topology map after expiration.

This setting is used only by the Redis output. The other outputs don’t support expiring entries.

The default is 15 seconds.

queue_size

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The internal queue size for single events in the processing pipeline. The default value is 1000.

bulk_queue_size

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(DO NOT TOUCH) The internal queue size for bulk events in the processing pipeline. The default value is 0.

max_procs

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Sets the maximum number of CPUs that can be executing simultaneously. The default is the number of logical CPUs available in the system.

geoip.paths

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Deprecated in 5.0.0.

Please use the Geoip processor in Ingest Node or the Logstash GeoIP filter instead

This configuration option is currently used by Packetbeat only and it will be removed in version 6.0.

The paths to search for GeoIP databases. The Beat loads the first installed GeoIP database that if finds. Then, for each transaction, the Beat exports the GeoIP location of the client.

The recommended values for geoip.paths are /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoLiteCity.dat and /usr/local/var/GeoIP/GeoLiteCity.dat.

If no paths are configured, GeoIP is disabled.

Example:

geoip:
  paths:
    - "/usr/share/GeoIP/GeoLiteCity.dat"
    - "/usr/local/var/GeoIP/GeoLiteCity.dat"

Important: For GeoIP support to function correctly, the GeoLite City database is required.

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