Netdata management and configuration cheatsheet

Use our management & configuration cheatsheet to simplify your interactions with Netdata, including configuration, using charts, managing the daemon, and more.

Install Netdata

Install Netdata

wget -O /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh && sh /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh

Do you want automatic updates? default: enabled

Do you want nightly or stable releases? default: nightly

Do you want to contribute anonymous statistics? default: enabled

Or, if you have cURL but not wget (such as on macOS):

curl https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh > /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh && sh /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh

Do you want automatic updates? default: enabled

Do you want nightly or stable releases? default: nightly

Do you want to contribute anonymous statistics? default: enabled

Claim a node to Netdata Cloud

To do so, sign in to Netdata Cloud, click the Claim Nodes button, choose the War Rooms to add nodes to, then click Copy to copy the full script to your clipboard. Paste that into your node’s terminal and run it.

Metrics collection & retention

You can tweak your settings in the netdata.conf file. 📄 Find your netdata.conf file

Open a new terminal and navigate to the netdata.conf file. Use the edit-config script to make changes: sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf

The most popular settings to change are:

Increase metrics retention (4GiB)

sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf

[global]
 dbengine multihost disk space = 4096

Reduce the collection frequency (every 5 seconds)

sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf

[global]
 update every = 5

Enable/disable plugins (groups of collectors)

sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf

[plugins]
 go.d = yes # enabled
 node.d = no # disabled

Enable/disable specific collectors

sudo ./edit-config go.d.conf

Or python.d.conf, node.d.conf, edbpf.conf, and so on.

modules:
 activemq: no # disabled
 bind: no # disabled
 cockroachdb: yes # enabled

Edit a collector's config (example)

$ sudo ./edit-config go.d/mysql.conf
$ sudo ./edit-config ebpf.conf
$ sudo ./edit-config python.d/anomalies.conf

Configuration

The Netdata config directory: /etc/netdata

If you don't have such a directory: 📄 Find your netdata.conf file The cheatsheet assumes you’re running all commands from within the Netdata config directory!

Edit Netdata's main config file: $ sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf

Edit Netdata's other config files (examples):

• $ sudo ./edit-config apps_groups.conf
• $ sudo ./edit-config ebpf.conf
• $ sudo ./edit-config health.d/load.conf
• $ sudo ./edit-config go.d/prometheus.conf

View the running Netdata configuration: http://NODE:19999/netdata.conf

Replace NODE with the IP address or hostname of your node. Often localhost.

Alarms & notifications

Add a new alarm

sudo touch health.d/example-alarm.conf
sudo ./edit-config health.d/example-alarm.conf

Configure a specific alarm

sudo ./edit-config health.d/example-alarm.conf

Silence a specific alarm

sudo ./edit-config health.d/example-alarm.conf
 to: silent

Disable alarms and notifications

[health]
 enabled = no

After any change, reload the Netdata health configuration

netdatacli reload-health

or if that command doesn't work on your installation, use:

killall -USR2 netdata

Manage the daemon

Intent	Action
Start Netdata	$ sudo systemctl start netdata
Stop Netdata	$ sudo systemctl stop netdata
Restart Netdata	$ sudo systemctl restart netdata
Reload health configuration	$ sudo netdatacli reload-health $ killall -USR2 netdata
View error logs	less /var/log/netdata/error.log

See metrics and dashboards

Netdata Cloud: https://app.netdata.cloud

Local dashboard: https://NODE:19999

Replace NODE with the IP address or hostname of your node. Often localhost.

Access the Netdata API: http://NODE:19999/api/v1/info

Interact with charts

Intent	Action
Stop a chart from updating	click
Zoom	Cloud use the zoom in and zoom out buttons on any chart (upper right corner) Agent SHIFT or ALT + mouse scrollwheel SHIFT or ALT + two-finger pinch (touchscreen) SHIFT or ALT + two-finger scroll (touchscreen)
Zoom to a specific timeframe	Cloud use the select and zoom button on any chart and then do a mouse selection Agent SHIFT + mouse selection
Pan forward or back in time	click & drag touch & drag (touchpad/touchscreen)
Select a certain timeframe	ALT + mouse selection WIP need to evaluate this command? + mouse selection (macOS)
Reset to default auto refreshing state	double click

Dashboards

Disable the local dashboard

Use the edit-config script to edit the netdata.conf file.

[web]
mode = none

Change the port Netdata listens to (port 39999)

[web]
default port = 39999

Opt out from anonymous statistics

sudo touch .opt-out-from-anonymous-statistics

Understanding the dashboard

Charts: A visualization displaying one or more collected/calculated metrics in a time series. Charts are generated by collectors.

Dimensions: Any value shown on a chart, which can be raw or calculated values, such as percentages, averages, minimums, maximums, and more.

Families: One instance of a monitored hardware or software resource that needs to be monitored and displayed separately from similar instances. Example, disks named sda, sdb, sdc, and so on.

Contexts: A grouping of charts based on the types of metrics collected and visualized. disk.io, disk.ops, and disk.backlog are all contexts.