This guide describes the recommended way to install Graylog on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and 15. All links and packages are present at the time of writing.

Warning: This guide does not cover security settings! The server administrator must make sure the Graylog server is not publicly exposed and is following security best practices.

Prerequisites

Hint: This guide assumes that any firewall is disabled and traffic can flow across all necessary ports.

Graylog 5.0 requires the following to maintain compatibility with its software dependencies: 

  • OpenJDK 17 (This is embedded in Graylog 5.0 and does not need to be separately installed.)
  • OpenSearch 1.x, 2.x (or Elasticsearch 7.10.2)
  • MongoDB 5.x or 6.x

Warning: We caution you not to install or upgrade Elasticsearch to 7.11+ or OpenSearch 2.14+! It is not supported. If you do so, it will break your instance!

Additionally, the following patterns are required for a minimal setup (see SUSE 15 SP3 Deployment Guide):

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- Base System
- Minimal System (Appliances)
- YaST configuration packages

MongoDB

Installing MongoDB on SUSE should follow the tutorial for SUSE from the MongoDB documentation. Graylog 5.0 is compatible with MongoDB 5.x-6.x.

1. Import the MongoDB public key.

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sudo rpm --import https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-6.0.asc

2. Add the MongoDB repository.

  1. Begin by opening the configuration file. Read the instructions within the configuration file and edit as needed.

    sudo nano /etc/graylog/server/server.conf

    Warning: Add password_secret and root_password_sha2 values to the configuration file as these are mandatory and Graylog will not start without them.

  2. To create your password_secret, run the following command:

    < /dev/urandom tr -dc A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-96};echo;

  3. Use the following command to create your root_password_sha2:

    echo -n "Enter Password: " && head -1 </dev/stdin | tr -d '\n' | sha256sum | cut -d" " -f1

  4. To be able to connect to Graylog, set the http_bind_address value in the configuration file to the public host name or a public IP address for the machine with which you can connect. More information about these settings can be found in Configuring the Web Interface. Bind HTTP server to listen for external connections. Otherwise the Graylog server will only be accessible from the server itself. You can also set this configuration using this command:

    sudo sed -i 's/#http_bind_address = 127.0.0.1.*/http_bind_address = 0.0.0.0:9000/g' /etc/graylog/server/server.conf

Hint: If you’re operating a single-node setup and would like to use HTTPS for the Graylog web interface and the Graylog REST API, it’s possible to use NGINX or Apache as a reverse proxy.

5. Edit the elasticsearch_hosts setting to include a list of comma-separated URIs to one or more valid OpenSearch nodes. A sample specification may look as follows:

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elasticsearch_hosts = http://es-node-1.example.org:9200/foo,https://someuser:somepassword@es-node-2.example.org:19200

Warning: If this setting is not adjusted before start up, then you will NOT be able to log into Graylog using your previously configured root password! For more information on this configuration setting, see Elasticsearch Configuration.

6. The last step is to enable Graylog during the operating system’s startup:

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sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable graylog-server.service
sudo systemctl start graylog-server.service
sudo systemctl --type=service --state=active | grep graylog

Now you can ingest messages into Graylog.

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sudo zypper addrepo --gpgcheck "https://repo.mongodb.org/zypper/suse/15/mongodb-org/6.0/x86_64/" mongodb

3. Install the MongoDB packages.

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sudo zypper -n install mongodb-org

4. Then, start the MongoDB instance.

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sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start mongod.service

5. In order to automatically start MongoDB on system boot, you have to activate the MongoDB service by running the following command:

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sudo systemctl enable mongod.service

Hint: For the following sections on OpenSearch and Elasticsearch, select which data node you will be using for your Graylog instance and complete only the requisite section.

OpenSearch

If you are using OpenSearch as your data node, then follow the steps below to install OpenSearch.

Hint: These installation steps assume you are using Zypper as your package manager with SUSE.

1. You may prefer to disable transparent hugepages to improve performance before installing:

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sudo su

cat > /etc/systemd/system/disable-transparent-huge-pages.service <<EOF
Description=Disable Transparent Huge Pages (THP)
DefaultDependencies=no
After=sysinit.target local-fs.target
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo never | tee /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled > /dev/null'
[Install]
WantedBy=basic.target
EOF

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable disable-transparent-huge-pages.service
sudo systemctl start disable-transparent-huge-pages.service

2. Install the OpenSearch GPG key:

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sudo rpm --import https://artifacts.opensearch.org/publickeys/opensearch.pgp

3. From the CLI, you can install the package.

Hint: OpenSearch v2.12 and greater now requires setting the OPENSEARCH_INITIAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD environment variable when installing. The password must be a minimum of eight characters, at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number and one special character.

sudo curl -SL https://artifacts.opensearch.org/releases/bundle/opensearch/2.x/opensearch-2.x.repo -o /etc/zypp/repos.d/opensearch-2.x.repo
sudo zypper update
sudo OPENSEARCH_INITIAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD=$(tr -dc A-Z-a-z-0-9_@#%^-_=+ < /dev/urandom  | head -c${1:-32}) zypper install -y opensearch  

4. Edit the opensearch.yml file:

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sudo nano /etc/opensearch/opensearch.yml

5. At a minimum the following changes are required (for a single instance install):

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cluster.name: 
path.data: /var/lib/opensearch
path.logs: /var/log/opensearch
action.auto_create_index: false
plugins.security.disabled: true
network.host: 0.0.0.0  
discovery.type: single-node
indices.query.bool.max_clause_count: 32768

6. After the installation succeeds, enable the OpenSearch service:

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sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable opensearch.service
sudo systemctl start opensearch.service

7. Then, enable and start OpenSearch:

sudo systemctl start opensearch

8. Finally, verify that OpenSearch launched correctly:

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sudo systemctl status opensearch

Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch 7.10.2 is the only version that is compatible with Graylog 5.0; however, we recommend OpenSearch for new Graylog cluster installations.

The following commands will begin the installation of the open-source version of Elasticsearch. See the Elasticsearch install page for more detailed instructions.

1. First install the Elasticsearch GPG key with:

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rpm --import https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch

2. Then add the repository file /etc/zypp/repos.d/elasticsearch.repo with the following contents:

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echo "[elasticsearch-7.10.2]
name=Elasticsearch repository for 7.10.2 packages
baseurl=https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/oss-7.x/yum
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
enabled=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md" | sudo tee /etc/zypp/repos.d/elasticsearch.repo

3. Install the 7.10.2 release with:

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sudo zypper install elasticsearch-oss

Graylog Configuration for Elasticsearch

1. Make sure to modify the Elasticsearch configuration file (/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml), set the cluster name to Graylog, and uncomment action.auto_create_index: false to enable the action:

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sudo tee -a /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml > /dev/null <<EOT
cluster.name: graylog
action.auto_create_index: false
EOT

2. In order to automatically start Elasticsearch on system boot, you must activate the Elasticsearch service by running the following commands:

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sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable elasticsearch.service
sudo systemctl start elasticsearch.service

Graylog

1. First install the Graylog GPG key with:

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sudo wget https://downloads.graylog.org/repo/el/stable/GPG-KEY-graylog -O /etc/pki/GPG-KEY-graylog

2. Then add the repository file /etc/zypp/repos.d/graylog.repo with the following content:

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[graylog]
name=graylog
baseurl=https://packages.graylog2.org/repo/el/stable/5.0/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-graylog

3. After that, install the latest Graylog Open release with:

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sudo zypper install graylog-server

If you are installing Graylog Operations, then you will use the following command:

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sudo zypper install graylog-enterprise

Edit the Graylog Configuration File

Read the instructions within the configurations file and edit as needed, located at /etc/graylog/server/server.conf. Additionally add password_secret and root_password_sha2 as these are mandatory and Graylog will not start without them.

1. You can use the following command to create your password_secret:

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cat /dev/urandom | base64 | cut -c1-96 | head -1

2. You will then need to use the following command to create your root_password_sha2:

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echo -n "Enter Password: " && head -1 </dev/stdin | tr -d '\n' | sha256sum | cut -d" " -f1

3. To be able to connect to Graylog, set http_bind_address to the public host name or a public IP address of the machine with which you can connect. More information about these settings can be found in Configuring the web interface.

Hint: If you’re operating a single-node setup and would like to use HTTPS for the Graylog web interface and the Graylog REST API, it’s possible to use NGINX or Apache as a reverse proxy.

4. The last step is to enable Graylog during the operating system’s startup:

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sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable graylog-server.service
sudo systemctl start graylog-server.service

Now you can ingest messages into your new Graylog Cluster and extract the messages with extractors or use pipelines to work with the messages.

Cluster Setup

If you plan to have multiple servers assuming different roles in your cluster like we have in this big production setup you need to modify only a few settings. This is covered in our multi-node setup guide. The default file location guide lists the locations of the files you need to modify.