Configuration

Grafana has default and custom configuration files. You can customize your Grafana instance by modifying the custom configuration file or by using environment variables. To see the list of settings for a Grafana instance, refer to View server settings.

Note: After you add custom options, uncomment the relevant sections of the configuration file. Restart Grafana for your changes to take effect.

Configuration file location

The default settings for a Grafana instance are stored in the $WORKING_DIR/conf/defaults.ini file. Do not change the location in this file.

Depending on your OS, your custom configuration file is either the $WORKING_DIR/conf/defaults.ini file or the /usr/local/etc/grafana/grafana.ini file. The custom configuration file path can be overridden using the --config parameter.

Linux

If you installed Grafana using the deb or rpm packages, then your configuration file is located at /etc/grafana/grafana.ini and a separate custom.ini is not used. This path is specified in the Grafana init.d script using --config file parameter.

Docker

Refer to Configure a Grafana Docker image for information about environmental variables, persistent storage, and building custom Docker images.

Windows

On Windows, the sample.ini file is located in the same directory as defaults.ini file. It contains all the settings commented out. Copy sample.ini and name it custom.ini.

macOS

By default, the configuration file is located at /usr/local/etc/grafana/grafana.ini. For a Grafana instance installed using Homebrew, edit the grafana.ini file directly. Otherwise, add a configuration file named custom.ini to the conf folder to override the settings defined in conf/defaults.ini.

Remove comments in the .ini files

Grafana uses semicolons (the ; char) to comment out lines in a .ini file. You must uncomment each line in the custom.ini or the grafana.ini file that you are modify by removing ; from the beginning of that line. Otherwise your changes will be ignored.

For example:

# The HTTP port  to use
;http_port = 3000

Configure with environment variables

All options in the configuration file can be overridden using environment variables using the syntax:

GF_<SectionName>_<KeyName>

Where the section name is the text within the brackets. Everything should be uppercase, . and - should be replaced by _. For example, if you have these configuration settings:

# default section
instance_name = ${HOSTNAME}

[security]
admin_user = admin

[auth.google]
client_secret = 0ldS3cretKey

[plugin.grafana-image-renderer]
rendering_ignore_https_errors = true

You can override them on Linux machines with:

export GF_DEFAULT_INSTANCE_NAME=my-instance
export GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_USER=owner
export GF_AUTH_GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=newS3cretKey
export GF_PLUGIN_GRAFANA_IMAGE_RENDERER_RENDERING_IGNORE_HTTPS_ERRORS=true

Variable expansion

Note: Only available in Grafana 7.1+.

If any of your options contains the expression $__<provider>{<argument>} or ${<environment variable>}, then they will be processed by Grafana’s variable expander. The expander runs the provider with the provided argument to get the final value of the option.

There are three providers: env, file, and vault.

Env provider

The env provider can be used to expand an environment variable. If you set an option to $__env{PORT} the PORT environment variable will be used in its place. For environment variables you can also use the short-hand syntax ${PORT}. Grafana’s log directory would be set to the grafana directory in the directory behind the LOGDIR environment variable in the following example.

[paths]
logs = $__env{LOGDIR}/grafana

File provider

file reads a file from the filesystem. It trims whitespace from the beginning and the end of files. The database password in the following example would be replaced by the content of the /etc/secrets/gf_sql_password file:

[database]
password = $__file{/etc/secrets/gf_sql_password}

Vault provider

The vault provider allows you to manage your secrets with Hashicorp Vault.

Vault provider is only available in Grafana Enterprise v7.1+. For more information, refer to Vault integration in Grafana Enterprise.

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app_mode

Options are production and development. Default is production. Do not change this option unless you are working on Grafana development.

instance_name

Set the name of the grafana-server instance. Used in logging, internal metrics, and clustering info. Defaults to: ${HOSTNAME}, which will be replaced with environment variable HOSTNAME, if that is empty or does not exist Grafana will try to use system calls to get the machine name.

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[paths]

data

Path to where Grafana stores the sqlite3 database (if used), file-based sessions (if used), and other data. This path is usually specified via command line in the init.d script or the systemd service file.

macOS: The default SQLite database is located at /usr/local/var/lib/grafana

temp_data_lifetime

How long temporary images in data directory should be kept. Defaults to: 24h. Supported modifiers: h (hours), m (minutes), for example: 168h, 30m, 10h30m. Use 0 to never clean up temporary files.

logs

Path to where Grafana stores logs. This path is usually specified via command line in the init.d script or the systemd service file. You can override it in the configuration file or in the default environment variable file. However, please note that by overriding this the default log path will be used temporarily until Grafana has fully initialized/started.

Override log path using the command line argument cfg:default.paths.logs:

./grafana-server --config /custom/config.ini --homepath /custom/homepath cfg:default.paths.logs=/custom/path

macOS: By default, the log file should be located at /usr/local/var/log/grafana/grafana.log.

plugins

Directory where Grafana automatically scans and looks for plugins. For information about manually or automatically installing plugins, refer to Install Grafana plugins.

macOS: By default, the Mac plugin location is: /usr/local/var/lib/grafana/plugins.

provisioning

Folder that contains provisioning config files that Grafana will apply on startup. Dashboards will be reloaded when the json files changes.

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[server]

protocol

http,https,h2 or socket

http_addr

The IP address to bind to. If empty will bind to all interfaces

http_port

The port to bind to, defaults to 3000. To use port 80 you need to either give the Grafana binary permission for example:

$ sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/sbin/grafana-server

Or redirect port 80 to the Grafana port using:

$ sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3000

Another way is to put a web server like Nginx or Apache in front of Grafana and have them proxy requests to Grafana.

domain

enforce_domain

Redirect to correct domain if the host header does not match the domain. Prevents DNS rebinding attacks. Default is false.

root_url

This is the full URL used to access Grafana from a web browser. This is important if you use Google or GitHub OAuth authentication (for the callback URL to be correct).

Note: This setting is also important if you have a reverse proxy in front of Grafana that exposes it through a subpath. In that case add the subpath to the end of this URL setting.

serve_from_sub_path

Serve Grafana from subpath specified in root_url setting. By default it is set to false for compatibility reasons.

By enabling this setting and using a subpath in root_url above, e.g. root_url = http://localhost:3000/grafana, Grafana is accessible on http://localhost:3000/grafana.

router_logging

Set to true for Grafana to log all HTTP requests (not just errors). These are logged as Info level events to the Grafana log.

static_root_path

The path to the directory where the front end files (HTML, JS, and CSS files). Defaults to public which is why the Grafana binary needs to be executed with working directory set to the installation path.

enable_gzip

Set this option to true to enable HTTP compression, this can improve transfer speed and bandwidth utilization. It is recommended that most users set it to true. By default it is set to false for compatibility reasons.

cert_file

Path to the certificate file (if protocol is set to https or h2).

cert_key

Path to the certificate key file (if protocol is set to https or h2).

socket

Path where the socket should be created when protocol=socket. Make sure that Grafana has appropriate permissions before you change this setting.

cdn_url

Note: Available in Grafana v7.4 and later versions.

Specify a full HTTP URL address to the root of your Grafana CDN assets. Grafana will add edition and version paths.

For example, given a cdn url like https://cdn.myserver.com grafana will try to load a javascript file from http://cdn.myserver.com/grafana-oss/7.4.0/public/build/app.<hash>.js.

read_timeout

Sets the maximum time using a duration format (5s/5m/5ms) before timing out read of an incoming request and closing idle connections. 0 means there is no timeout for reading the request.

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[database]

Grafana needs a database to store users and dashboards (and other things). By default it is configured to use sqlite3 which is an embedded database (included in the main Grafana binary).

type

Either mysql, postgres or sqlite3, it’s your choice.

host

Only applicable to MySQL or Postgres. Includes IP or hostname and port or in case of Unix sockets the path to it. For example, for MySQL running on the same host as Grafana: host = 127.0.0.1:3306 or with Unix sockets: host = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

name

The name of the Grafana database. Leave it set to grafana or some other name.

user

The database user (not applicable for sqlite3).

password

The database user’s password (not applicable for sqlite3). If the password contains # or ; you have to wrap it with triple quotes. For example """#password;"""

url

Use either URL or the other fields below to configure the database Example: mysql://user:secret@host:port/database

max_idle_conn

The maximum number of connections in the idle connection pool.

max_open_conn

The maximum number of open connections to the database.

conn_max_lifetime

Sets the maximum amount of time a connection may be reused. The default is 14400 (which means 14400 seconds or 4 hours). For MySQL, this setting should be shorter than the wait_timeout variable.

log_queries

Set to true to log the sql calls and execution times.

ssl_mode

For Postgres, use either disable, require or verify-full. For MySQL, use either true, false, or skip-verify.

isolation_level

Only the MySQL driver supports isolation levels in Grafana. In case the value is empty, the driver’s default isolation level is applied. Available options are “READ-UNCOMMITTED”, “READ-COMMITTED”, “REPEATABLE-READ” or “SERIALIZABLE”.

ca_cert_path

The path to the CA certificate to use. On many Linux systems, certs can be found in /etc/ssl/certs.

client_key_path

The path to the client key. Only if server requires client authentication.

client_cert_path

The path to the client cert. Only if server requires client authentication.

server_cert_name

The common name field of the certificate used by the mysql or postgres server. Not necessary if ssl_mode is set to skip-verify.

path

Only applicable for sqlite3 database. The file path where the database will be stored.

cache_mode

For “sqlite3” only. Shared cache setting used for connecting to the database. (private, shared) Defaults to private.

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[remote_cache]

type

Either redis, memcached, or database. Defaults to database

connstr

The remote cache connection string. The format depends on the type of the remote cache. Options are database, redis, and memcache.

database

Leave empty when using database since it will use the primary database.

redis

Example connstr: addr=127.0.0.1:6379,pool_size=100,db=0,ssl=false

• addr is the host : port of the redis server.
• pool_size (optional) is the number of underlying connections that can be made to redis.
• db (optional) is the number identifier of the redis database you want to use.
• ssl (optional) is if SSL should be used to connect to redis server. The value may be true, false, or insecure. Setting the value to insecure skips verification of the certificate chain and hostname when making the connection.

memcache

Example connstr: 127.0.0.1:11211

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[dataproxy]

logging

This enables data proxy logging, default is false.

timeout

How long the data proxy should wait before timing out. Default is 30 seconds.

This setting also applies to core backend HTTP data sources where query requests use an HTTP client with timeout set.

keep_alive_seconds

Interval between keep-alive probes. Default is 30 seconds. For more details check the Dialer.KeepAlive documentation.

tls_handshake_timeout_seconds

The length of time that Grafana will wait for a successful TLS handshake with the datasource. Default is 10 seconds. For more details check the Transport.TLSHandshakeTimeout documentation.

expect_continue_timeout_seconds

The length of time that Grafana will wait for a datasource’s first response headers after fully writing the request headers, if the request has an “Expect: 100-continue” header. A value of 0 will result in the body being sent immediately. Default is 1 second. For more details check the Transport.ExpectContinueTimeout documentation.

max_conns_per_host

Optionally limits the total number of connections per host, including connections in the dialing, active, and idle states. On limit violation, dials are blocked. A value of 0 means that there are no limits. Default is 0. For more details check the Transport.MaxConnsPerHost documentation.

max_idle_connections

The maximum number of idle connections that Grafana will maintain. Default is 100. For more details check the Transport.MaxIdleConns documentation.

max_idle_connections_per_host

[Deprecated - use max_idle_connections instead]

The maximum number of idle connections per host that Grafana will maintain. Default is 2. For more details check the Transport.MaxIdleConnsPerHost documentation.

idle_conn_timeout_seconds

The length of time that Grafana maintains idle connections before closing them. Default is 90 seconds. For more details check the Transport.IdleConnTimeout documentation.

send_user_header

If enabled and user is not anonymous, data proxy will add X-Grafana-User header with username into the request. Default is false.

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[analytics]

reporting_enabled

When enabled Grafana will send anonymous usage statistics to stats.grafana.org. No IP addresses are being tracked, only simple counters to track running instances, versions, dashboard and error counts. It is very helpful to us, so please leave this enabled. Counters are sent every 24 hours. Default value is true.

check_for_updates

Set to false to disable all checks to

google_analytics_ua_id

If you want to track Grafana usage via Google analytics specify your Universal Analytics ID here. By default this feature is disabled.

google_tag_manager_id

Google Tag Manager ID, only enabled if you enter an ID here.

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[security]

disable_initial_admin_creation

Only available in Grafana v6.5+.

Disable creation of admin user on first start of Grafana. Default is false.

admin_user

The name of the default Grafana Admin user, who has full permissions. Default is admin.

admin_password

The password of the default Grafana Admin. Set once on first-run. Default is admin.

secret_key

Used for signing some data source settings like secrets and passwords, the encryption format used is AES-256 in CFB mode. Cannot be changed without requiring an update to data source settings to re-encode them.

disable_gravatar

Set to true to disable the use of Gravatar for user profile images. Default is false.

data_source_proxy_whitelist

Define a whitelist of allowed IP addresses or domains, with ports, to be used in data source URLs with the Grafana data source proxy. Format: ip_or_domain:port separated by spaces. PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MSSQL data sources do not use the proxy and are therefore unaffected by this setting.

disable_brute_force_login_protection

Set to true to disable brute force login protection. Default is false.

cookie_secure

Set to true if you host Grafana behind HTTPS. Default is false.

cookie_samesite

Sets the SameSite cookie attribute and prevents the browser from sending this cookie along with cross-site requests. The main goal is to mitigate the risk of cross-origin information leakage. This setting also provides some protection against cross-site request forgery attacks (CSRF), read more about SameSite here. Valid values are lax, strict, none, and disabled. Default is lax. Using value disabled does not add any SameSite attribute to cookies.

allow_embedding

When false, the HTTP header X-Frame-Options: deny will be set in Grafana HTTP responses which will instruct browsers to not allow rendering Grafana in a <frame>, <iframe>, <embed> or <object>. The main goal is to mitigate the risk of Clickjacking. Default is false.

strict_transport_security

Set to true if you want to enable HTTP Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) response header. This is only sent when HTTPS is enabled in this configuration. HSTS tells browsers that the site should only be accessed using HTTPS.

strict_transport_security_max_age_seconds

Sets how long a browser should cache HSTS in seconds. Only applied if strict_transport_security is enabled. The default value is 86400.

strict_transport_security_preload

Set to true to enable HSTS preloading option. Only applied if strict_transport_security is enabled. The default value is false.

strict_transport_security_subdomains

Set to true if to enable the HSTS includeSubDomains option. Only applied if strict_transport_security is enabled. The default value is false.

x_content_type_options

Set to true to enable the X-Content-Type-Options response header. The X-Content-Type-Options response HTTP header is a marker used by the server to indicate that the MIME types advertised in the Content-Type headers should not be changed and be followed. The default value is false.

x_xss_protection

Set to false to disable the X-XSS-Protection header, which tells browsers to stop pages from loading when they detect reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. The default value is false until the next minor release, 6.3.

content_security_policy

Set to true to add the Content-Security-Policy header to your requests. CSP allows to control resources that the user agent can load and helps prevent XSS attacks.

content_security_policy_template

Set Content Security Policy template used when adding the Content-Security-Policy header to your requests. $NONCE in the template includes a random nonce.

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[snapshots]

external_enabled

Set to false to disable external snapshot publish endpoint (default true).

external_snapshot_url

Set root URL to a Grafana instance where you want to publish external snapshots (defaults to https://snapshots-origin.raintank.io).

external_snapshot_name

Set name for external snapshot button. Defaults to Publish to snapshot.raintank.io.

public_mode

Set to true to enable this Grafana instance to act as an external snapshot server and allow unauthenticated requests for creating and deleting snapshots. Default is false.

snapshot_remove_expired

Enable this to automatically remove expired snapshots. Default is true.

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[dashboards]

versions_to_keep

Number dashboard versions to keep (per dashboard). Default: 20, Minimum: 1.

min_refresh_interval

Only available in Grafana v6.7+.

This feature prevents users from setting the dashboard refresh interval to a lower value than a given interval value. The default interval value is 5 seconds. The interval string is a possibly signed sequence of decimal numbers, followed by a unit suffix (ms, s, m, h, d), e.g. 30s or 1m.

As of Grafana v7.3, this also limits the refresh interval options in Explore.

default_home_dashboard_path

Path to the default home dashboard. If this value is empty, then Grafana uses StaticRootPath + “dashboards/home.json”.

Note: On Linux, Grafana uses /usr/share/grafana/public/dashboards/home.json as the default home dashboard location.

---

[users]

allow_sign_up

Set to false to prohibit users from being able to sign up / create user accounts. Default is false. The admin user can still create users from the Grafana Admin Pages.

allow_org_create

Set to false to prohibit users from creating new organizations. Default is false.

auto_assign_org

Set to true to automatically add new users to the main organization (id 1). When set to false, new users automatically cause a new organization to be created for that new user. Default is true.

auto_assign_org_id

Set this value to automatically add new users to the provided org. This requires auto_assign_org to be set to true. Please make sure that this organization already exists. Default is 1.

auto_assign_org_role

The role new users will be assigned for the main organization (if the above setting is set to true). Defaults to Viewer, other valid options are Admin and Editor. e.g.:

auto_assign_org_role = Viewer

verify_email_enabled

Require email validation before sign up completes. Default is false.

login_hint

Text used as placeholder text on login page for login/username input.

password_hint

Text used as placeholder text on login page for password input.

default_theme

Set the default UI theme: dark or light. Default is dark.

home_page

Path to a custom home page. Users are only redirected to this if the default home dashboard is used. It should match a frontend route and contain a leading slash.

External user management

If you manage users externally you can replace the user invite button for organizations with a link to an external site together with a description.

viewers_can_edit

Viewers can access and use Explore and perform temporary edits on panels in dashboards they have access to. They cannot save their changes. Default is false.

editors_can_admin

Editors can administrate dashboards, folders and teams they create. Default is false.

user_invite_max_lifetime_duration

The duration in time a user invitation remains valid before expiring. This setting should be expressed as a duration. Examples: 6h (hours), 2d (days), 1w (week). Default is 24h (24 hours). The minimum supported duration is 15m (15 minutes).

hidden_users

This is a comma-separated list of usernames. Users specified here are hidden in the Grafana UI. They are still visible to Grafana administrators and to themselves.

---

[auth]

Grafana provides many ways to authenticate users. Refer to the Grafana Authentication overview and other authentication documentation for detailed instructions on how to set up and configure authentication.

login_cookie_name

The cookie name for storing the auth token. Default is grafana_session.

login_maximum_inactive_lifetime_duration

The maximum lifetime (duration) an authenticated user can be inactive before being required to login at next visit. Default is 7 days (7d). This setting should be expressed as a duration, e.g. 5m (minutes), 6h (hours), 10d (days), 2w (weeks), 1M (month). The lifetime resets at each successful token rotation (token_rotation_interval_minutes).

login_maximum_lifetime_duration

The maximum lifetime (duration) an authenticated user can be logged in since login time before being required to login. Default is 30 days (30d). This setting should be expressed as a duration, e.g. 5m (minutes), 6h (hours), 10d (days), 2w (weeks), 1M (month).

token_rotation_interval_minutes

How often auth tokens are rotated for authenticated users when the user is active. The default is each 10 minutes.

disable_login_form

Set to true to disable (hide) the login form, useful if you use OAuth. Default is false.

disable_signout_menu

Set to true to disable the signout link in the side menu. This is useful if you use auth.proxy. Default is false.

signout_redirect_url

URL to redirect the user to after they sign out.

oauth_auto_login

Set to true to attempt login with OAuth automatically, skipping the login screen. This setting is ignored if multiple OAuth providers are configured. Default is false.

oauth_state_cookie_max_age

How many seconds the OAuth state cookie lives before being deleted. Default is 600 (seconds) Administrators can increase this if they experience OAuth login state mismatch errors.

api_key_max_seconds_to_live

Limit of API key seconds to live before expiration. Default is -1 (unlimited).

sigv4_auth_enabled

Only available in Grafana 7.3+.

Set to true to enable the AWS Signature Version 4 Authentication option for HTTP-based datasources. Default is false.

---

[auth.anonymous]

Refer to Anonymous authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.github]

Refer to GitHub OAuth2 authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.gitlab]

Refer to Gitlab OAuth2 authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.google]

Refer to Google OAuth2 authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.grafananet]

Legacy key names, still in the config file so they work in env variables.

---

[auth.grafana_com]

Legacy key names, still in the config file so they work in env variables.

---

[auth.azuread]

Refer to Azure AD OAuth2 authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.okta]

Refer to Okta OAuth2 authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.generic_oauth]

Refer to Generic OAuth authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.basic]

Refer to Basic authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.proxy]

Refer to Auth proxy authentication for detailed instructions.

---

[auth.ldap]

Refer to LDAP authentication for detailed instructions.

[aws]

You can configure core and external AWS plugins.

allowed_auth_providers

Specify what authentication providers the AWS plugins allow. For a list of allowed providers, refer to the data-source configuration page for a given plugin. If you configure a plugin by provisioning, only providers that are specified in allowed_auth_providers are allowed.

Options: default (AWS SDK default), keys (Access and secret key), credentials (Credentials file), ec2_iam_role (EC2 IAM role)

assume_role_enabled

Set to false to disable AWS authentication from using an assumed role with temporary security credentials. For details about assume roles, refer to the AWS API reference documentation about the AssumeRole operation.

If this option is disabled, the Assume Role and the External Id field are removed from the AWS data source configuration page. If the plugin is configured using provisioning, it is possible to use an assumed role as long as assume_role_enabled is set to true.

list_metrics_page_limit

Use the List Metrics API option to load metrics for custom namespaces in the CloudWatch data source. By default, the page limit is 500.

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[azure]

Grafana supports additional integration with Azure services when hosted in the Azure Cloud.

cloud

Azure cloud environment where Grafana is hosted:

Azure Cloud	Value
Microsoft Azure public cloud	AzureCloud (default)
Microsoft Chinese national cloud	AzureChinaCloud
US Government cloud	AzureUSGovernment
Microsoft German national cloud (“Black Forest”)	AzureGermanCloud

managed_identity_enabled

Specifies whether Grafana hosted in Azure service with Managed Identity configured (e.g. Azure Virtual Machines instance). Disabled by default, needs to be explicitly enabled.

managed_identity_client_id

The client ID to use for user-assigned managed identity.

Should be set for user-assigned identity and should be empty for system-assigned identity.

[auth.jwt]

Refer to JWT authentication for more information.

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[smtp]

Email server settings.

enabled

Enable this to allow Grafana to send email. Default is false.

If the password contains # or ;, then you have to wrap it with triple quotes. Example: “""#password;”""

host

Default is localhost:25.

user

In case of SMTP auth, default is empty.

password

In case of SMTP auth, default is empty.

cert_file

File path to a cert file, default is empty.

key_file

File path to a key file, default is empty.

skip_verify

Verify SSL for SMTP server, default is false.

from_address

Address used when sending out emails, default is admin@grafana.localhost.

from_name

Name to be used when sending out emails, default is Grafana.

ehlo_identity

Name to be used as client identity for EHLO in SMTP dialog, default is <instance_name>.

startTLS_policy

Either “OpportunisticStartTLS”, “MandatoryStartTLS”, “NoStartTLS”. Default is empty.

---

[emails]

welcome_email_on_sign_up

Default is false.

templates_pattern

Enter a comma separated list of template patterns. Default is emails/*.html, emails/*.txt.

content_types

Enter a comma-separated list of content types that should be included in the emails that are sent. List the content types according descending preference, e.g. text/html, text/plain for HTML as the most preferred. The order of the parts is significant as the mail clients will use the content type that is supported and most preferred by the sender. Supported content types are text/html and text/plain. Default is text/html.

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[log]

Grafana logging options.

mode

Options are “console”, “file”, and “syslog”. Default is “console” and “file”. Use spaces to separate multiple modes, e.g. console file.

level

Options are “debug”, “info”, “warn”, “error”, and “critical”. Default is info.

filters

Optional settings to set different levels for specific loggers. For example: filters = sqlstore:debug

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[log.console]

Only applicable when “console” is used in [log] mode.

level

Options are “debug”, “info”, “warn”, “error”, and “critical”. Default is inherited from [log] level.

format

Log line format, valid options are text, console and json. Default is console.

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[log.file]

Only applicable when “file” used in [log] mode.

level

Options are “debug”, “info”, “warn”, “error”, and “critical”. Default is inherited from [log] level.

format

Log line format, valid options are text, console and json. Default is text.

log_rotate

Enable automated log rotation, valid options are false or true. Default is true. When enabled use the max_lines, max_size_shift, daily_rotate and max_days to configure the behavior of the log rotation.

max_lines

Maximum lines per file before rotating it. Default is 1000000.

max_size_shift

Maximum size of file before rotating it. Default is 28, which means 1 << 28, 256MB.

daily_rotate

Enable daily rotation of files, valid options are false or true. Default is true.

max_days

Maximum number of days to keep log files. Default is 7.

---

[log.syslog]

Only applicable when “syslog” used in [log] mode.

level

Options are “debug”, “info”, “warn”, “error”, and “critical”. Default is inherited from [log] level.

format

Log line format, valid options are text, console, and json. Default is text.

network and address

Syslog network type and address. This can be UDP, TCP, or UNIX. If left blank, then the default UNIX endpoints are used.

facility

Syslog facility. Valid options are user, daemon or local0 through local7. Default is empty.

tag

Syslog tag. By default, the process’s argv[0] is used.

---

[log.frontend]

Note: This feature is available in Grafana 7.4+.

enabled

Sentry javascript agent is initialized. Default is false.

sentry_dsn

Sentry DSN if you want to send events to Sentry

custom_endpoint

Custom HTTP endpoint to send events captured by the Sentry agent to. Default, /log, will log the events to stdout.

sample_rate

Rate of events to be reported between 0 (none) and 1 (all, default), float.

log_endpoint_requests_per_second_limit

Requests per second limit enforced per an extended period, for Grafana backend log ingestion endpoint, /log. Default is 3.

log_endpoint_burst_limit

Maximum requests accepted per short interval of time for Grafana backend log ingestion endpoint, /log. Default is 15.

---

[quota]

Set quotas to -1 to make unlimited.

enabled

Enable usage quotas. Default is false.

org_user

Limit the number of users allowed per organization. Default is 10.

org_dashboard

Limit the number of dashboards allowed per organization. Default is 100.

org_data_source

Limit the number of data sources allowed per organization. Default is 10.

org_api_key

Limit the number of API keys that can be entered per organization. Default is 10.

org_alert_rule

Limit the number of alert rules that can be entered per organization. Default is 100.

user_org

Limit the number of organizations a user can create. Default is 10.

global_user

Sets a global limit of users. Default is -1 (unlimited).

global_org

Sets a global limit on the number of organizations that can be created. Default is -1 (unlimited).

global_dashboard

Sets a global limit on the number of dashboards that can be created. Default is -1 (unlimited).

global_api_key

Sets global limit of API keys that can be entered. Default is -1 (unlimited).

global_session

Sets a global limit on number of users that can be logged in at one time. Default is -1 (unlimited).

global_alert_rule

Sets a global limit on number of alert rules that can be created. Default is -1 (unlimited).

---

[unified_alerting]

For more information about the Grafana 8 alerts, refer to Unified Alerting.

admin_config_poll_interval_seconds

Specify the frequency of polling for admin config changes. The default value is 60.

---

[alerting]

For more information about the Alerting feature in Grafana, refer to Alerts overview.

enabled

Set to false to disable alerting engine and hide Alerting in the Grafana UI. Default is true.

execute_alerts

Turns off alert rule execution, but Alerting is still visible in the Grafana UI.

error_or_timeout

Default setting for new alert rules. Defaults to categorize error and timeouts as alerting. (alerting, keep_state)

nodata_or_nullvalues

Defines how Grafana handles nodata or null values in alerting. Options are alerting, no_data, keep_state, and ok. Default is no_data.

concurrent_render_limit

Alert notifications can include images, but rendering many images at the same time can overload the server. This limit protects the server from render overloading and ensures notifications are sent out quickly. Default value is 5.

evaluation_timeout_seconds

Sets the alert calculation timeout. Default value is 30.

notification_timeout_seconds

Sets the alert notification timeout. Default value is 30.

max_attempts

Sets a maximum limit on attempts to sending alert notifications. Default value is 3.

min_interval_seconds

Sets the minimum interval between rule evaluations. Default value is 1.

Note. This setting has precedence over each individual rule frequency. If a rule frequency is lower than this value, then this value is enforced.

max_annotation_age =

Configures for how long alert annotations are stored. Default is 0, which keeps them forever. This setting should be expressed as a duration. Examples: 6h (hours), 10d (days), 2w (weeks), 1M (month).

max_annotations_to_keep =

Configures max number of alert annotations that Grafana stores. Default value is 0, which keeps all alert annotations.

---

[annotations]

cleanupjob_batchsize

Configures the batch size for the annotation clean-up job. This setting is used for dashboard, API, and alert annotations.

[annotations.dashboard]

Dashboard annotations means that annotations are associated with the dashboard they are created on.

max_age

Configures how long dashboard annotations are stored. Default is 0, which keeps them forever. This setting should be expressed as a duration. Examples: 6h (hours), 10d (days), 2w (weeks), 1M (month).

max_annotations_to_keep

Configures max number of dashboard annotations that Grafana stores. Default value is 0, which keeps all dashboard annotations.

[annotations.api]

API annotations means that the annotations have been created using the API without any association with a dashboard.

max_age

Configures how long Grafana stores API annotations. Default is 0, which keeps them forever. This setting should be expressed as a duration. Examples: 6h (hours), 10d (days), 2w (weeks), 1M (month).

max_annotations_to_keep

Configures max number of API annotations that Grafana keeps. Default value is 0, which keeps all API annotations.

---

[explore]

For more information about this feature, refer to Explore.

enabled

Enable or disable the Explore section. Default is enabled.

[metrics]

For detailed instructions, refer to Internal Grafana metrics.

enabled

Enable metrics reporting. defaults true. Available via HTTP API <URL>/metrics.

interval_seconds

Flush/write interval when sending metrics to external TSDB. Defaults to 10.

disable_total_stats

If set to true, then total stats generation (stat_totals_* metrics) is disabled. Default is false.

basic_auth_username and basic_auth_password

If both are set, then basic authentication is required to access the metrics endpoint.

---

[metrics.environment_info]

Adds dimensions to the grafana_environment_info metric, which can expose more information about the Grafana instance.

; exampleLabel1 = exampleValue1
; exampleLabel2 = exampleValue2

[metrics.graphite]

Use these options if you want to send internal Grafana metrics to Graphite.

address

Enable by setting the address. Format is <Hostname or ip>:port.

prefix

Graphite metric prefix. Defaults to prod.grafana.%(instance_name)s.

---

[grafana_net]

url

Default is

---

[grafana_com]

url

Default is

---

[tracing.jaeger]

Configure Grafana’s Jaeger client for distributed tracing.

You can also use the standard JAEGER_* environment variables to configure Jaeger. See the table at the end of https://www.jaegertracing.io/docs/1.16/client-features/ for the full list. Environment variables will override any settings provided here.

address

The host:port destination for reporting spans. (ex: localhost:6831)

Can be set with the environment variables JAEGER_AGENT_HOST and JAEGER_AGENT_PORT.

always_included_tag

Comma-separated list of tags to include in all new spans, such as tag1:value1,tag2:value2.

Can be set with the environment variable JAEGER_TAGS (use = instead of : with the environment variable).

sampler_type

Default value is const.

Specifies the type of sampler: const, probabilistic, ratelimiting, or remote.

Refer to https://www.jaegertracing.io/docs/1.16/sampling/#client-sampling-configuration for details on the different tracing types.

Can be set with the environment variable JAEGER_SAMPLER_TYPE.

sampler_param

Default value is 1.

This is the sampler configuration parameter. Depending on the value of sampler_type, it can be 0, 1, or a decimal value in between.

• For const sampler, 0 or 1 for always false/true respectively
• For probabilistic sampler, a probability between 0 and 1.0
• For rateLimiting sampler, the number of spans per second
• For remote sampler, param is the same as for probabilistic and indicates the initial sampling rate before the actual one is received from the mothership

May be set with the environment variable JAEGER_SAMPLER_PARAM.

sampling_server_url

sampling_server_url is the URL of a sampling manager providing a sampling strategy.

zipkin_propagation

Default value is false.

Controls whether or not to use Zipkin’s span propagation format (with x-b3- HTTP headers). By default, Jaeger’s format is used.

Can be set with the environment variable and value JAEGER_PROPAGATION=b3.

disable_shared_zipkin_spans

Default value is false.

Setting this to true turns off shared RPC spans. Leaving this available is the most common setting when using Zipkin elsewhere in your infrastructure.

---

[external_image_storage]

These options control how images should be made public so they can be shared on services like Slack or email message.

provider

Options are s3, webdav, gcs, azure_blob, local). If left empty, then Grafana ignores the upload action.

---

[external_image_storage.s3]

endpoint

Optional endpoint URL (hostname or fully qualified URI) to override the default generated S3 endpoint. If you want to keep the default, just leave this empty. You must still provide a region value if you specify an endpoint.

path_style_access

Set this to true to force path-style addressing in S3 requests, i.e., http://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET/KEY, instead of the default, which is virtual hosted bucket addressing when possible (http://BUCKET.s3.amazonaws.com/KEY).

Note: This option is specific to the Amazon S3 service.

bucket_url

(for backward compatibility, only works when no bucket or region are configured) Bucket URL for S3. AWS region can be specified within URL or defaults to ‘us-east-1’, e.g.

• http://grafana.s3.amazonaws.com/
• https://grafana.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/

bucket

Bucket name for S3. e.g. grafana.snapshot.

region

Region name for S3. e.g. ‘us-east-1’, ‘cn-north-1’, etc.

path

Optional extra path inside bucket, useful to apply expiration policies.

access_key

Access key, e.g. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Access key requires permissions to the S3 bucket for the ‘s3:PutObject’ and ‘s3:PutObjectAcl’ actions.

secret_key

Secret key, e.g. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

---

[external_image_storage.webdav]

url

URL where Grafana sends PUT request with images.

username

Basic auth username.

password

Basic auth password.

public_url

Optional URL to send to users in notifications. If the string contains the sequence ${file}, it is replaced with the uploaded filename. Otherwise, the file name is appended to the path part of the URL, leaving any query string unchanged.

---

[external_image_storage.gcs]

key_file

Optional path to JSON key file associated with a Google service account to authenticate and authorize. If no value is provided it tries to use the application default credentials. Service Account keys can be created and downloaded from https://console.developers.google.com/permissions/serviceaccounts.

Service Account should have “Storage Object Writer” role. The access control model of the bucket needs to be “Set object-level and bucket-level permissions”. Grafana itself will make the images public readable when signed urls are not enabled.

bucket

Bucket Name on Google Cloud Storage.

path

Optional extra path inside bucket.

enable_signed_urls

If set to true, Grafana creates a signed URL for the image uploaded to Google Cloud Storage.

signed_url_expiration

Sets the signed URL expiration, which defaults to seven days.

[external_image_storage.azure_blob]

account_name

Storage account name.

account_key

Storage account key

container_name

Container name where to store “Blob” images with random names. Creating the blob container beforehand is required. Only public containers are supported.

---

[external_image_storage.local]

This option does not require any configuration.

---

[rendering]

Options to configure a remote HTTP image rendering service, e.g. using https://github.com/grafana/grafana-image-renderer.

server_url

URL to a remote HTTP image renderer service, e.g. http://localhost:8081/render, will enable Grafana to render panels and dashboards to PNG-images using HTTP requests to an external service.

callback_url

If the remote HTTP image renderer service runs on a different server than the Grafana server you may have to configure this to a URL where Grafana is reachable, e.g. http://grafana.domain/.

concurrent_render_request_limit

Concurrent render request limit affects when the /render HTTP endpoint is used. Rendering many images at the same time can overload the server, which this setting can help protect against by only allowing a certain number of concurrent requests. Default is 30.

[panels]

enable_alpha

Set to true if you want to test alpha panels that are not yet ready for general usage. Default is false.

disable_sanitize_html

If set to true Grafana will allow script tags in text panels. Not recommended as it enables XSS vulnerabilities. Default is false. This setting was introduced in Grafana v6.0.

[plugins]

enable_alpha

Set to true if you want to test alpha plugins that are not yet ready for general usage. Default is false.

allow_loading_unsigned_plugins

Enter a comma-separated list of plugin identifiers to identify plugins to load even if they are unsigned. Plugins with modified signatures are never loaded.

We do not recommend using this option. For more information, refer to Plugin signatures.

plugin_admin_enabled

Available to Grafana administrators only, the plugin admin app is set to false by default. Set it to true to enable the app.

For more information, refer to Plugin catalog.

plugin_admin_external_manage_enabled

Set to true if you want to enable external management of plugins. Default is false. This is only applicable to Grafana Cloud users.

plugin_catalog_url

Custom install/learn more URL for enterprise plugins. Defaults to https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/.

---

[live]

max_connections

Note: Available in Grafana v8.0 and later versions.

The max_connections option specifies the maximum number of connections to the Grafana Live WebSocket endpoint per Grafana server instance. Default is 100.

Refer to Grafana Live configuration documentation if you specify a number higher than default since this can require some operating system and infrastructure tuning.

0 disables Grafana Live, -1 means unlimited connections.

allowed_origins

Note: Available in Grafana v8.0.4 and later versions.

The allowed_origins option is a comma-separated list of additional origins (Origin header of HTTP Upgrade request during WebSocket connection establishment) that will be accepted by Grafana Live.

If not set (default), then the origin is matched over root_url which should be sufficient for most scenarios.

Origin patterns support wildcard symbol “*”.

For example:

[live]
allowed_origins = "https://*.example.com"

ha_engine

Note: Available in Grafana v8.1 and later versions.

Experimental

The high availability (HA) engine name for Grafana Live. By default, it’s not set. The only possible value is “redis”.

For more information, refer to Configure Grafana Live HA setup.

ha_engine_address

Note: Available in Grafana v8.1 and later versions.

Experimental

Address string of selected the high availability (HA) Live engine. For Redis, it’s a host:port string. Example:

[live]
ha_engine = redis
ha_engine_address = 127.0.0.1:6379

---

[plugin.grafana-image-renderer]

For more information, refer to Image rendering.

rendering_timezone

Instruct headless browser instance to use a default timezone when not provided by Grafana, e.g. when rendering panel image of alert. See ICUs metaZones.txt for a list of supported timezone IDs. Fallbacks to TZ environment variable if not set.

rendering_language

Instruct headless browser instance to use a default language when not provided by Grafana, e.g. when rendering panel image of alert. Refer to the HTTP header Accept-Language to understand how to format this value, e.g. ‘fr-CH, fr;q=0.9, en;q=0.8, de;q=0.7, *;q=0.5’.

rendering_viewport_device_scale_factor

Instruct headless browser instance to use a default device scale factor when not provided by Grafana, e.g. when rendering panel image of alert. Default is 1. Using a higher value will produce more detailed images (higher DPI), but requires more disk space to store an image.

rendering_ignore_https_errors

Instruct headless browser instance whether to ignore HTTPS errors during navigation. Per default HTTPS errors are not ignored. Due to the security risk, we do not recommend that you ignore HTTPS errors.

rendering_verbose_logging

Instruct headless browser instance whether to capture and log verbose information when rendering an image. Default is false and will only capture and log error messages.

When enabled, debug messages are captured and logged as well.

For the verbose information to be included in the Grafana server log you have to adjust the rendering log level to debug, configure [log].filter = rendering:debug.

rendering_dumpio

Instruct headless browser instance whether to output its debug and error messages into running process of remote rendering service. Default is false.

It can be useful to set this to true when troubleshooting.

rendering_args

Additional arguments to pass to the headless browser instance. Defaults are --no-sandbox,--disable-gpu. The list of Chromium flags can be found at (https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/). Separate multiple arguments with commas.

rendering_chrome_bin

You can configure the plugin to use a different browser binary instead of the pre-packaged version of Chromium.

Please note that this is not recommended. You might encounter problems if the installed version of Chrome/Chromium is not compatible with the plugin.

rendering_mode

Instruct how headless browser instances are created. Default is default and will create a new browser instance on each request.

Mode clustered will make sure that only a maximum of browsers/incognito pages can execute concurrently.

Mode reusable will have one browser instance and will create a new incognito page on each request.

rendering_clustering_mode

When rendering_mode = clustered you can instruct how many browsers or incognito pages can execute concurrently. Default is browser and will cluster using browser instances.

Mode context will cluster using incognito pages.

rendering_clustering_max_concurrency

When rendering_mode = clustered you can define the maximum number of browser instances/incognito pages that can execute concurrently.

rendering_viewport_max_width

Limit the maximum viewport width that can be requested.

rendering_viewport_max_height

Limit the maximum viewport height that can be requested.

rendering_viewport_max_device_scale_factor

Limit the maximum viewport device scale factor that can be requested.

grpc_host

Change the listening host of the gRPC server. Default host is 127.0.0.1.

grpc_port

Change the listening port of the gRPC server. Default port is 0 and will automatically assign a port not in use.

---

[enterprise]

For more information about Grafana Enterprise, refer to Grafana Enterprise.

---

[feature_toggles]

enable

Keys of alpha features to enable, separated by space. Available alpha features are: ngalert

[date_formats]

Note: The date format options below are only available in Grafana v7.2+.

This section controls system-wide defaults for date formats used in time ranges, graphs, and date input boxes.

The format patterns use Moment.js formatting tokens.

full_date

Full date format used by time range picker and in other places where a full date is rendered.

intervals

These intervals formats are used in the graph to show only a partial date or time. For example, if there are only minutes between Y-axis tick labels then the interval_minute format is used.

Defaults

interval_second = HH:mm:ss
interval_minute = HH:mm
interval_hour = MM/DD HH:mm
interval_day = MM/DD
interval_month = YYYY-MM
interval_year = YYYY

use_browser_locale

Set this to true to have date formats automatically derived from your browser location. Defaults to false. This is an experimental feature.

default_timezone

Used as the default time zone for user preferences. Can be either browser for the browser local time zone or a time zone name from the IANA Time Zone database, such as UTC or Europe/Amsterdam.

[expressions]

Note: This feature is available in Grafana v7.4 and later versions.

enabled

Set this to false to disable expressions and hide them in the Grafana UI. Default is true.

[geomap]

This section controls the defaults settings for Geomap Plugin.

default_baselayer_config

The json config used to define the default base map. Four base map options to choose from are carto, esriXYZTiles, xyzTiles, standard. For example, to set cartoDB light as the default base layer:

default_baselayer_config = `{
  "type": "xyz",
  "config": {
    "attribution": "Open street map",
    "url": "https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png"
  }
}`

enable_custom_baselayers

Set this to true to disable loading other custom base maps and hide them in the Grafana UI. Default is false.