Connect to the Web Interface

When your Graylog instance or cluster is up and running, the next thing you usually want to do is check out our web interface, which offers you great capabilities for searching and analyzing your indexed data and configuring your Graylog environment. By default you can access it using your browser on https://<graylog-server>:9000/.

Access the Web Interface

1. Open a browser and navigate to the URL https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9000. Substitute the IP of your Graylog server.

2. If using a VM appliance, log in using admin for both the username and password. If using either container or OS versions of Graylog, log in as an admin and use the password secret you created when you installed Graylog.

The Graylog web interface was rewritten in JavaScript for 2.0 to be a client-side single-page browser application. This means its code is running solely in your browser, fetching all data via HTTP(S) from the REST API of your Graylog server.

Getting Started with the Web Interface

Now that you are connected to the web interface, you can start to explore Graylog!

After logging in you will be directed to the Getting Started page, which is customized with information specific to your Graylog experience:

• Last Opened: A list of your most recently view saved searches and dashboards so you can resume your latest journey if desired.

• Favorite Items: An overview of saved searches and dashboards that you have marked as favorite items.

• Recent Activity: A list of recent actions by other Graylog users, including newly created content or content shared with you.

Configuration Options

If our default settings do not work for your environment, there are a number of options in the Graylog server configuration file that you can change to influence its behavior:

How Does the Web Interface Connect to the Graylog Server?

The web interface is fetching all information it is showing from the REST API of the Graylog server. Therefore it needs to connect to it using HTTP(S). There are several ways how you can define which way the web interface connects to the Graylog server. The URI used by the web interface is determined in this exact order:

• If the HTTP(S) client going to the web interface port sends a X-Graylog-Server-URL header, which contains a valid URL, then this is overriding everything else.
• If http_external_uri is defined in the Graylog configuration file, this is used if the aforementioned header is not set.
• If http_publish_uri is defined in the Graylog configuration file, this is used if the aforementioned http_external_uri is not set.
• If none of the above are defined, https://$http_bind_address is used.

The web interface assets (e.g. the index.html, CSS and JavaScript files) are accessible at the URI root (/ by default) and the REST API endpoints are accessible at the /api path.

For example, setting http_bind_address to 10.0.0.1:9000 configures the Graylog server with the following URLs:

• Web interface: https://10.0.0.1:9000/
• REST API: https://10.0.0.1:9000/api/

Browser Compatibility

Making the Web Interface Work with Load Balancers/Proxies

If you want to run a load balancer/reverse proxy in front of Graylog, you need to make sure that:

• The HTTP port of the load balancer/reverse proxy is accessible for clients
• The HTTP address for the Graylog server is properly set (as explained in How does the web interface connect to the Graylog server?), so it is resolvable and accessible for the load balancer/reverse proxy.
• If you use SSL, your certificates must be valid and trusted by your clients.

For the configuration use cases below we assume the following:

• Your Graylog server configuration contains http_bind_address = 127.0.0.1:9000
• The hostname for the setup is graylog.example.org
• The IP address for that hostname is 192.168.0.10

Using a Layer 3 Load Balancer (Forwarding TCP Ports)

1. Configure your load balancer to forward connections going to 192.168.0.10:80 to 127.0.0.1:9000.
2. Start the Graylog server as usual.
3. Access the web interface on https://graylog.example.org.
4. Read up on Using HTTPS .

NGINX

Proxy web interface and API traffic using HTTP

server
{
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
    server_name graylog.example.org;

    location / {
      proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header X-Graylog-Server-URL http://$server_name/;
      proxy_pass       http://127.0.0.1:9000;
    }
}

NGINX can be used for SSL Termination, you would only need to modify the server listen directive and add all information about your certificate.

If you are deploying multiple Graylog Servers you can use HTTPS/SSL to connect to the Graylog Servers (read Using HTTPS) and use HTTPS/SSL on NGINX. Note that configuration for TLS certificates, keys and ciphers is omitted from the sample config below.

Proxy web interface and API traffic using HTTPS (TLS)

server
{
    listen      443 ssl http2;
    server_name graylog.example.org;
    # <- your SSL Settings here!

    location /
    {
      proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header X-Graylog-Server-URL https://$server_name/;
      proxy_pass       http://127.0.0.1:9000;
    }
}

If you want to serve several different applications under one domain name, you can also serve the Graylog web interface using a path prefix.

Proxy web interface and API traffic under a path prefix using HTTP

server
{
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
    server_name applications.example.org;

    location /graylog/
    {
      proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header X-Graylog-Server-URL http://$server_name/graylog/;
      rewrite          ^/graylog/(.*)$  /$1  break;
      proxy_pass       http://127.0.0.1:9000;
    }
}

This makes your Graylog setup available under the following URLs:

• Web interface: https://applications.example.org/graylog/
• REST API: https://applications.example.org/graylog/api/

Apache httpd 2.x

Proxy web interface and API traffic using HTTP

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName graylog.example.org
    ProxyRequests Off
    <Proxy *>
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from all
    </Proxy>

    <Location />
        RequestHeader set X-Graylog-Server-URL "http://graylog.example.org/"
        ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:9000/
        ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:9000/
    </Location>

</VirtualHost>

Proxy web interface and API traffic using HTTPS (TLS)

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName graylog.example.org
    ProxyRequests Off
    SSLEngine on
    # <- your SSL Settings here!

    <Proxy *>
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from all
    </Proxy>

    <Location />
        RequestHeader set X-Graylog-Server-URL "https://graylog.example.org/"
        ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:9000/
        ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:9000/
    </Location>

</VirtualHost>

HAProxy 1.6

Proxy web interface and API traffic using HTTP

frontend http
    bind 0.0.0.0:80

    option forwardfor
    http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Host %[req.hdr(host)]
    http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Server %[req.hdr(host)]
    http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Port %[dst_port]
    acl is_graylog hdr_dom(host) -i -m str graylog.example.org
    use_backend     graylog if is_graylog

backend graylog
    description     The Graylog Web backend.
    http-request set-header X-Graylog-Server-URL http://graylog.example.org/
    use-server graylog_1
    server graylog_1 127.0.0.1:9000 maxconn 20 check

Multiple Backends (roundrobin) with Health-Check (using HTTP)

frontend graylog_http
    bind *:80
    option forwardfor
    http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Host %[req.hdr(host)]
    http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Server %[req.hdr(host)]
    http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Port %[dst_port]
    acl is_graylog hdr_dom(host) -i -m str graylog.example.org
    use_backend     graylog

backend graylog
    description     The Graylog Web backend.
    balance roundrobin
    option httpchk HEAD /api/system/lbstatus
    http-request set-header X-Graylog-Server-URL http://graylog.example.org/
    server graylog1 192.168.0.10:9000 maxconn 20 check
    server graylog2 192.168.0.11:9000 maxconn 20 check
    server graylog3 192.168.0.12:9000 maxconn 20 check