This guide describes the fastest way to install Graylog on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3. 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

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.

Add the GPG key and the repository before installing MongoDB:

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sudo rpm --import https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-6.0.asc
sudo zypper addrepo --gpgcheck "https://repo.mongodb.org/zypper/suse/15/mongodb-org/6.0/x86_64/" mongodb
sudo zypper -n install mongodb-org

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

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sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable mongod.service
sudo systemctl start 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 2.4.1.

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

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

First, install the OpenSearch GPG key:

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

Download the Opensearch 2.4.1 package:

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wget https://artifacts.opensearch.org/releases/bundle/opensearch/2.4.1/opensearch-2.4.1-linux-x64.rpm

From the CLI, you can install the package.

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 zypper install opensearch

For rpm x64.

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sudo rpm -ivh opensearch-2.4.1-linux-x64.rpm

Edit the opensearch.yml file:

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sudo nano /etc/opensearch/opensearch.yml

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

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

Then, enable and start OpenSearch.

sudo systemctl start opensearch

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.

First install the Elasticsearch GPG key with:

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

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

Install the 7.10.2 release with:

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sudo zypper install elasticsearch-oss

Graylog Configuration for Elasticsearch

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

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

First install the Graylog GPG key with:

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rpm --import https://packages.graylog2.org/repo/debian/keyring.gpg

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

After that, install the latest 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 Configuration File

Make sure to follow the instructions in your /etc/graylog/server/server.conf and add password_secret and root_password_sha2. These settings are mandatory and without them, Graylog will not start!

You can use the following command to create your password_secret:

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

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

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.

Note: 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.

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

The next step is to 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.