How to Install Loki on Arch Linux

Loki is a horizontally-scalable, highly-available, multi-tenant log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus. In this tutorial, we will see how we can install Loki on Arch Linux.

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure that you have the following:

• A Arch Linux machine with root access or a user with sudo privileges.
• Internet Connection

Step 1: Install Go language

Loki is written in Go language, so you need to install Go on your Arch Linux machine.

$ sudo pacman -S go

Step 2: Download and Install Loki

1. Go to the Loki download page and download the latest stable release.

2. Extract the downloaded file using the following command.

$ tar xfz loki-linux-amd64.tar.gz

3. Move the extracted binary file to the /usr/local/bin directory.

$ sudo mv loki-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/loki

Step 3: Create Loki Configuration File

Create a configuration file for Loki named loki-config.yaml in /etc directory.

$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/loki/
$ sudo touch /etc/loki/loki-config.yaml

Now open loki-config.yaml and add the following configuration. This is just an example, you can customize the configuration according to your needs.

auth_enabled: false

server:
  http_listen_port: 3100

ingester:
  lifecycler:
    address: 127.0.0.1
    ring:
      kvstore:
        store: inmemory
      replication_factor: 1
    final_sleep: 0s
  chunk_idle_period: 15m
  max_chunk_age: 1h
  chunk_target_size: 1048576
  chunk_retain_period: 30s
  max_transfer_retries: 0

schema_config:
  configs:
    - from: 2018-04-15
      store: boltdb
      object_store: filesystem
      schema: v9
      index:
        prefix: index_
        period: 24h

storage_config:
  boltdb:
    directory: /tmp/loki/index

limits_config:
  ingestion_rate_mb: 10
  ingestion_burst_size_mb: 20

Step 4: Create Systemd Service

Create a systemd service file for Loki in /etc/systemd/system directory.

$ sudo touch /etc/systemd/system/loki.service

Open loki.service file and add the following configuration.

[Unit]
Description=Loki service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/loki -config.file /etc/loki/loki-config.yaml

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Step 5: Reload Systemd and Start Loki

Reload the systemd configuration and start the Loki service.

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl start loki

Verify that the Loki service is running by checking its status.

$ sudo systemctl status loki

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have learned how to install Loki on Arch Linux along with creating the configuration and systemd service file. You can customize the configuration as per your needs to start using Loki.

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