Skip to content
LogScale Self-Hosted Deployment
This is an archived version of the documentation downloaded from LogScale Documentation Archives. Up to date documentation, and documentation for later versions, is available on LogScale Documentation

## LogScale on Bare Metal - Installing LogScale

CrowdStrike recommends installing LogScale on Ubuntu using a LTS release. Before completing the LogScale installation, the following must be in place:

- Kafka cluster available, and the host names and ports for the Kafka nodes known. See Installing Native Kafka to deploy a native Kafka cluster or if deploying within AWS, use Deploying Kafka using Amazon MSK to deploy an Amazon MSK cluster.

There are some additional preparations required before installing LogScale.

### LogScale User and Directories

A suitable user and directories to store the LogScale data must be created first:

1. Create a non-administrative user named `humio` to run LogScale software in the background:

   shell

       $ adduser humio --shell=/bin/false --no-create-home --system --group

   Add this user to the `DenyUsers` section of the `/etc/ssh/sshd_config` file on each node to prevent it from being able to ssh or sftp into the node. Restart the `sshd` daemon after making the change.

2. Create the LogScale system directories and give the `humio` user ownership of them:

   shell

       $ chown humio:humio /var/log/humio /var/humio/data

### LogScale Software Installation

The LogScale software is distributed as a tarball. This should be downloaded into the LogScale users home directory, and then extracted before configuration:

shell

    $ cd /opt/humio/
    $ wget https://repo.humio.com/repository/maven-releases/com/humio/server-linux_x64/1.124.3/server-1.124.3.tar.gz
    $ tar xzf /opt/humio/server-1.124.3.tar.gz

The wget here is used to download the latest release from https://repo.humio.com/service/rest/repository/browse/maven-releases/com/humio/server-linux_x64/.

### LogScale Configuration

The LogScale configuration is stored in a file `server.conf` in the `/etc/humio` directory. The lines in this file contain configuration information as key/value pairs that are referred to as the LogScale environment variables

Below is a sample configuration file that defines a LogScale configuration for a single host in KRaft Mode:

ini

    AUTHENTICATION_METHOD=single-user
    DIRECTORY=/var/humio/data
    HUMIO_AUDITLOG_DIR=/var/log/humio
    HUMIO_DEBUGLOG_DIR=/var/log/humio
    JVM_LOG_DIR=/var/log/humio
    HUMIO_PORT=8080
    ELASTIC_PORT=9200
    KAFKA_SERVERS=kafka1:9092,kafka2:9092,kafka3:9092
    KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=kafka1:9092,kafka2:9092,kafka3:9092
    EXTERNAL_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080
    PUBLIC_URL=http://127.0.0.1

These lines configure the following settings:

- `AUTHENTICATION_METHOD=single-user`

  Sets the authentication method. Initially a single-user model is used. The `SINGLE_USER_USERNAME` and `SINGLE_USER_PASSWORD` can be added to set a username and password to connect to the cluster. For information on other authorization methods, see Authentication and identity providers.

- `DIRECTORY=/var/humio/data`

  Sets the directory where LogScale will store data.

- `HUMIO_AUDITLOG_DIR=/var/log/humio`

  Sets the directory for logs from LogScale for auditing.

- `HUMIO_DEBUGLOG_DIR=/var/log/humio`

  Sets the directory for logs from LogScale.

- `JVM_LOG_DIR=/var/log/humio`

  Sets the directory for logs from LogScale.

- `HUMIO_PORT=8080`

  Sets the default port that will be used to access LogScale.

- `ELASTIC_PORT=9200`

  Sets the port for ingesting data using the Elastic bulk protocol.

- `KAFKA_SERVERS=kafka1:9092,kafka2:9092,kafka3:9092`

  Sets the list of Kafka servers required by LogScale.

- `KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=kafka1:9092,kafka2:9092,kafka3:9092`

  If using Kafka in KRaft mode, set the bootstrap servers to configure the location for configuration LogScale and Kafka started.

- `EXTERNAL_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080`

  Sets the external URL that LogScale will listen for connections. The above uses the localhost address (127.0.0.1) but this should be changed to the hostname of the LogScale node, for example `logscale1`.

- `PUBLIC_URL=http://127.0.0.1`

  Sets the public URL that LogScale will use to advertise and create links. The above uses the localhost address (`127.0.0.1`), but this should be changed to the IP address of the load balance used to access the cluster. See Installing Load Balancers for more information.

### Important

Changes made to the configuration files must be made on all nodes, and each node will need to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

For more information on each of the environment variables, see Configuration Variables.

### Configuring LogScale as a Service

Next you should set up a service file. Using a simple text editor, create a file named, `humio.service` in the `/etc/systemd/system/` sub-directory. Add these lines to that file:

ini

    [Unit]
    Description=LogScale service
    After=network.service

    [Service]
    Type=notify
    Restart=on-abnormal
    User=humio
    Group=humio
    LimitNOFILE=250000:250000
    EnvironmentFile=/etc/humio/server.conf
    WorkingDirectory=/var/humio
    ExecStart=/opt/humio/humio/bin/humio-server-start.sh
    TimeoutSec=900

    [Install]
    WantedBy=default.target

Configuring the service uses the LogScale Launcher Script

### LogScale Ownership and Start-up

The ownership of the LogScale files and start the LogScale service must be changed to the `humio` user created earlier:

shell

    $ chown -R humio:humio /var/log/humio /var/humio/data

LogScale is now ready to be started using the systemctl utility:

shell

    $ systemctl start humio

Check that LogScale is running using the journalctl tool:

shell

    $ journalctl -fu humio

If there are no errors, open a web browser and enter the domain name or IP address with port `8080`.

#### Enter search term