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How to setup and secure Telegraf, InfluxDB and Grafana on Linux

 ·  β˜• 18 min read  ·  🐧 sysadmin

The tutorial is for Red Hat family server distributions like CentOS 7.x, Red Hat 7.x, Fedora29 or newer (current version is 32), etc.

For Debian family server distributions like (Debian, Ubuntu etc.) I recommend to read this article: How To Setup Telegraf InfluxDB and Grafana on Linux, however it does not contain the own domain and fail2ban setup.

I decided to copy some parts from tutorials. References are at the end of this tutorial:

β€žFrom all the existing modern monitoring tools, the TIG (Telegraf, InfluxDB and Grafana) stack is probably one of the most popular ones.

This stack can be used to monitor a wide panel of different data sources: from operating systems (such as Linux or Windows performance metrics), to databases (such as MongoDB or MySQL), the possibilities are endless.

The principle of the TIG stack is easy to understand.

Telegraf is an agent responsible for gathering and aggregating data, like the current CPU usage for example.

InfluxDB will store data, and expose it to Grafana, which is a modern dashboarding solution.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to setup Telegraf, InfluxDB and Grafana. You will also learn how to secure our instances with HTTPS via secure certificates.”

A modern monitoring infrastructure with Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana

A modern monitoring infrastructure with Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana

This tutorial is going to cover steps for Influx 1.8.x, but I will link to the InfluxDB 2.x setup as soon as it is written.

Before starting, make sure that you have sudo privileges on the system, otherwise you won’t be able to install any packages.

All installation activities will be done as root. So you need to type in terminal:

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sudo -i or sudo su -
cd

I – Installing InfluxDB

a – Install InfluxDB as a service

Get the software
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wget https://dl.influxdata.com/influxdb/releases/influxdb-1.8.2.x86_64.rpm
and install
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yum localinstall influxdb-1.8.2.x86_64.rpm

b – Verify your InfluxDB installation

Right now, InfluxDB should run as a service on your server.

To verify it, run the following command:

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$ systemctl status influxdb

InfluxDB should run automatically, but if this is not the case, make sure to start it.

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systemctl start influxdb

InfluxDB service

InfluxDB service

However, even if your service is running, it does not guarantee that it is correctly working.

To verify it, check your journal logs.

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journalctl -f -u influxdb.service

InfluxDB logs

InfluxDB logs

Ctrl+c will exit the logging mode.

If you are having error messages in this section, please refer to the troubleshooting section at the end.

To make it sure that the InfluxDB service will start with the server enable it.

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systemctl enable influxdb

TCP port 8086 is used for client-server communication over InfluxDB’s HTTP API
TCP port 8088 is used for the RPC service for backup and restore

You can view the current configuration with:

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influxd config

The configuration file can be found in: /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf

Let’s create a database and make it secure. Create an admin user with all the rights and a user used by Telegraf.

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influx -precision rfc3339
> CREATE DATABASE "GRAFANA"
> SHOW DATABASES
> CREATE USER "admin" WITH PASSWORD 'secret' WITH ALL PRIVILEGES
> CREATE USER "telegraf" WITH PASSWORD 'secret'
> GRANT ALL ON "GRAFANA" to "telegraf"
> SHOW GRANTS FOR "telegraf"
> SHOW USERS

Of course you have to change the secret to your password. I recommend to use at least 20 digit password which contains uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special symbols. Just for security reason, because Grafana does not have a two factor authentication (2FA).

I recommend to set up retention policy.

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influx -precision rfc3339
> CREATE RETENTION POLICY "twenty_four_hours" ON "GRAFANA" DURATION 24h REPLICATION 1 DEFAULT
> CREATE RETENTION POLICY "a_year" ON "GRAFANA" DURATION 52w REPLICATION 1
> CREATE CONTINUOUS QUERY "cq_30m" ON "GRAFANA" BEGIN SELECT mean("website") AS "mean_website",mean("phone") AS "mean_phone" INTO "a_year"."downsampled_orders" FROM "orders" GROUP BY time(30m) END

Explanation you will find in References and here: InfluxDB retention policy

One fact is worth to mention, that 24 hours is set as default. Just because my server does not have much space and I need only 24 hours graphs in grafana.

To check retention policy just type:

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SHOW RETENTION POLICIES ON GRAFANA

To remove 24 hours retention policy just type:

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DROP RETENTION POLICY twenty_four_hours ON GRAFANA

Restart InfluxDB service.

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systemctl restart influxdb

To get rid of logging to the /var/log/messages just edit the file /usr/lib/systemd/system/influxdb.service and add below entries in [Service] section:

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StandardOutput=null
StandardError=null

After that restart influxdb service.

II – Installing Telegraf

Telegraf is an agent that collects metrics related to a wide panel of different targets.

It can also be used as a tool to process, aggregate, split or group data.

The whole list of available targets (also called inputs) is available here.

In our case, we are going to use InfluxDB as an output.

a – Install Telegraf as a service

To install Telegraf 1.15.2 on Red Hat 7.x, CentOS 7.x or Fedora 29 or newer, run the following commands:

Get the software
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wget https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.15.2-1.x86_64.rpm
and install
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yum localinstall telegraf-1.15.2-1.x86_64.rpm

b – Verify your Telegraf installation

Right now, Telegraf should run as a service on your server.

To verify it, run the following command:

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systemctl status telegraf

Telegraf should run automatically, but if this is not the case, make sure to start it.

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systemctl start telegraf

Telegraf service

Telegraf service
However, even if your service is running, it does not guarantee that it is correctly sending data to InfluxDB.

To verify it, check your journal logs.

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journalctl -f -u telegraf.service

Telegraf logs

Telegraf logs
If you are having error messages in this section, please refer to the **troubleshooting** section at the end.

To make it sure that the InfluxDB service will start with the server enable it.

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systemctl enable telegraf

III – Configure InfluxDB Authentication

a – Enable HTTP authentication on your InfluxDB server

HTTP authentication needs to be enabled in the InfluxDB configuration file.

Head over to /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf and edit the following lines.

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[http]
  # Determines whether HTTP endpoint is enabled.
  enabled = true
  
  # The bind address used by the HTTP service.
  bind-address = ":8086"

  # Determines whether user authentication is enabled over HTTP/HTTPS.
  auth-enabled = true

b – Configure HTTP authentication on Telegraf

Now that a user account is created for Telegraf, we are going to make sure that it uses it to write data.

Head over to the configuration file of Telegraf, located at /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf.

Modify the following lines :

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## HTTP Basic Auth
  username = "telegraf"
  password = "secret"

Restart the Telegraf service, as well as the InfluxDB service.

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systemctl restart influxdb
systemctl restart telegraf

Again, check that you are not getting any errors when restarting the service.

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journalctl -f -u telegraf.service

Awesome, our requests are now authenticated.

Time to encrypt them.

IV – Configure HTTPS on InfluxDB

Configuring secure protocols between Telegraf and InfluxDB is a very important step.

You would not want anyone to be able to sniff data you are sending to your InfluxDB server.

If your Telegraf instances are running remotely (on a Raspberry Pi or another server for example), securing data transfer is a mandatory step as there is a very high chance that somebody will be able to read the data you are sending.

a – Create a private key for your InfluxDB server

First, install the gnutls-utils package that might come as gnutls-bin on Debian distributions for example.

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yum install gnutls-utils

Now that you have the certtool installed, generate a private key for your InfluxDB server.

Head over to the /etc/ssl folder of your Linux distribution and create a new folder for InfluxDB.

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cd /etc/ssl
mkdir influxdb && cd influxdb
certtool --generate-privkey --outfile server-key.pem --bits 2048

b – Create a public key for your InfluxDB server

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certtool --generate-self-signed --load-privkey server-key.pem --outfile server-cert.pem

Great! You now have a** key pair** for your InfluxDB server.

Other option is to generate it this way:

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openssl req -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/ssl/influxdb/influxdb-selfsigned.key -out /etc/ssl/influxdb/influxdb-selfsigned.crt -days <NUMBER_OF_DAYS>

When you execute the command, it will prompt you for more information. You can choose to fill out that information or leave it blank; both actions generate valid certificate files.

Do not forget to set permissions for the InfluxDB user and group.

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chown influxdb:influxdb server-key.pem server-cert.pem

or

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chown influxdb:influxdb influxdb-selfsigned.key influxdb-selfsigned.crt

Run the following command to give InfluxDB read and write permissions on the certificate files.

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chmod 644 /etc/ssl/influxdb/server-cert.pem
chmod 600 /etc/ssl/influxdb/server-key.pem

or

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chmod 644 /etc/ssl/influxdb/influxdb-selfsigned.crt
chmod 600 /etc/ssl/influxdb/influxdb-selfsigned.key

c – Enable HTTPS on your InfluxDB server

Now that your certificates are created, it is time to tweak our InfluxDB configuration file to enable HTTPS.

Head over to /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf and modify the following lines.

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# Determines whether HTTPS is enabled.
  https-enabled = true

# The SSL certificate to use when HTTPS is enabled.
https-certificate = "/etc/ssl/influxdb/server-cert.pem"

# Use a separate private key location.
https-private-key = "/etc/ssl/influxdb/server-key.pem"

Restart the InfluxDB service and make sure that you are not getting any errors.

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systemctl restart influxdb
journalctl -f -u influxdb.service

d – Configure Telegraf for HTTPS

Now that HTTPS is available on the InfluxDB server, it is time for Telegraf to reach InfluxDB via HTTPS.

Head over to /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf and modify the following lines.

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# Configuration for sending metrics to InfluxDB
[[outputs.influxdb]]

# https, not http!
urls = ["https://127.0.0.1:8086"]

## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
insecure_skip_verify = true

Why are we enabling the insecure_skip_verify parameter?

Because we are using a self-signed certificate.

As a consequence, the InfluxDB server identify is not certified by a certificate authority.

Restart Telegraf, and again make sure that you are not getting any errors.

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sudo systemctl restart telegraf
sudo journalctl -f -u telegraf.service

IV – Exploring your metrics on InfluxDB

Before installing Grafana and creating our first Telegraf dashboard, let’s have a quick look at how Telegraf aggregates our metrics.

By default, for Linux systems, Telegraf will start gathering related to the performance of your system via plugins named cpu, disk, diskio, kernel, mem, processes, swap and system.

Names are pretty self-explanatory, those plugins gather some metrics on the** CPU usage**, the memory usage as well as the current disk read and write IO operations.

Let’s have a quick look at one of the measurements.

To do this, use the InfluxDB CLI with the following parameters.

Data is stored in the β€œtelegraf” database, each measurement being named as the name of the input plugin.

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$ influx -ssl -unsafeSsl -username 'admin' -password 'secret'
Connected to http://localhost:8086 version 1.8.2
InfluxDB shell version: 1.8.2

> USE GRAFANA
> SELECT * FROM cpu WHERE time > now() - 30s

InfluxDB metrics

InfluxDB metrics
Great!

Data is correctly being aggregated on the InfluxDB server.

It is time to setup Grafana and build our first system dashboard.

V – Installing Grafana

a – Install Grafana as a service

To install Grafana 7.1.5 on Red Hat 7.x, CentOS 7.x or Fedora 29 or newer, run the following commands:

Get the software
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wget https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana-7.1.5-1.x86_64.rpm
and install
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yum localinstall grafana-7.1.5-1.x86_64.rpm

b – Verify your Grafana installation

Right now, Grafana should run as a service on your server.

To verify it, run the following command:

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systemctl status grafana-server

Grafana should run automatically, but if this is not the case, make sure to start it.

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systemctl start grafana-server

Grafana service

Grafana service

Head over to /etc/grafana/grafana.ini and edit the following lines.

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[server]
# The public facing domain name used to access grafana from a browser
;domain = localhost
domain = grafana.example.com

# The full public facing url you use in browser, used for redirects and emails
# If you use reverse proxy and sub path specify full url (with sub path)
root_url = %(protocol)s://%(domain)s

# Serve Grafana from subpath specified in `root_url` setting. By default it is set to `false` for compatibility reasons.
serve_from_sub_path = false
  
[security]
# disable creation of admin user on first start of grafana
disable_initial_admin_creation = true

# default admin user, created on startup
admin_user = admin

# disable protection against brute force login attempts
disable_brute_force_login_protection = false

# set to true if you host Grafana behind HTTPS. default is false.
cookie_secure = true

# set cookie SameSite attribute. defaults to `lax````bashbash. can be set to "lax", "strict", "none" and "disabled"
cookie_samesite = lax

# Set to true if you want to enable http strict transport security (HSTS) response header.
# This is only sent when HTTPS is enabled in this configuration.
# HSTS tells browsers that the site should only be accessed using HTTPS.
strict_transport_security = true

# Sets how long a browser should cache HSTS. Only applied if strict_transport_security is enabled.
strict_transport_security_max_age_seconds = 86400

# Set to true if to enable HSTS preloading option. Only applied if strict_transport_security is enabled.
strict_transport_security_preload = true

# Set to true if to enable the HSTS includeSubDomains option. Only applied if strict_transport_security is enabled.
strict_transport_security_subdomains = true

# Set to true to enable the X-Content-Type-Options response header.
# The X-Content-Type-Options response HTTP header is a marker used by the server to indicate that the MIME types advertised
# in the Content-Type headers should not be changed and be followed.
x_content_type_options = true

# Set to true to enable the X-XSS-Protection header, which tells browsers to stop pages from loading
# when they detect reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
x_xss_protection = true

[users]
# disable user signup / registration
allow_sign_up = false

[auth.anonymous]
# enable anonymous access
enabled = false

[log]
# Either "console", "file", "syslog". Default is console and  file
# Use space to separate multiple modes, e.g. "console file"
mode = console file

# Either "debug", "info", "warn", "error", "critical", default is "info"
level = debug

# optional settings to set different levels for specific loggers. Ex filters = sqlstore:debug
filters = context:debug

# For "console" mode only
[log.console]
level = debug

# For "file" mode only
[log.file]
level = debug

# log line format, valid options are text, console and json
format = console

# This enables automated log rotate(switch of following options), default is true
log_rotate = true

# Max line number of single file, default is 1000000
max_lines = 1000000

# Max size shift of single file, default is 28 means 1 &lt;&lt; 28, 256MB
max_size_shift = 28

# Segment log daily, default is true
daily_rotate = true

# Expired days of log file(delete after max days), default is 7
max_days = 7

However, even if your service is running, it does not guarantee that it is correctly sending data to InfluxDB.

To verify it, check your journal logs.

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journalctl -f -u grafana-server.service

Grafana logs

Grafana logs
If you are having error messages in this section, please refer to the **troubleshooting** section at the end.

To make it sure that the Grafana service will start with the server enable it.

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systemctl enable grafana-server

c - Configure web server Nginx

In your Nginx configuration file, add a new server bash block:

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server { 
    listen 80; 
    root /usr/share/nginx/html; 
    index index.html index.htm; 

    location / { 
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000/; 
    } 
}

Reload Nginx configuration.

To configure NGINX to serve Grafana under a sub path, update the `location````bashbash block:

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server {
    listen 80;
  root /usr/share/nginx/html;
   index index.html index.htm;

    location /grafana/ {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000/;
    }
}

d - Configure web server Apache

In your Apache configuration file, add a new `server````bashbash block:

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ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPass "/" "http://localhost:3000/"
ProxyPassReverse "/" "http://localhost:3000/"

<Location />
    Require all granted 
</Location>

<Directory "/var/www/html/grafana.example.com/public_html/">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes IncludesNOEXEC SymLinksIfOwnerMatch 
    AllowOverride All 
    Require all granted 
    RewriteEngine On
</Directory>

If you are using php-fpm proxy, additionally you should add this in virtual host:

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# Redirect to the proxy
<FilesMatch \.php$> 
    SetHandler proxy:fcgi://php-fpm 
</FilesMatch>

If you will have any troubles with the virtual host configuration contact me. I will help. I use grafana with SSL from Let’s Encrypt.

e – Add InfluxDB as a datasource on Grafana

In the left menu, click on the Configuration > Data sources section.

Grafana config datasource

Grafana config datasource

In the next window, click on β€œAdd datasourceβ€œ.

Grafana add data source

Grafana add data source

In the datasource selection panel, choose InfluxDB as a datasource.

InfluxDB as datasource

InfluxDB as datasource

Here is the configuration you have to match to configure InfluxDB on Grafana.

InfluxDB config

InfluxDB config

Click on β€œSave and Test”, and make sure that you are not getting any errors.

data source is working

data source is working

Getting a 502 Bad Gateway error? Make sure that your URL field is set to HTTPS and not HTTP.

If everything is okay, it is time to create our Telegraf dashboard.

f – Importing a Grafana dashboard

We are not going to create a Grafana dashboard for Telegraf, we are going to use a pre-existing one already developed by the community.

If in the future you want to develop your own dashboard, feel free to do it.

To import a Grafana dashboard, select the Import option in the left menu, under the Plus icon.

import dashboard

import dashboard

On the next screen, import the dashboard with the 5955 ID.

This is a dashboard created by jmutai that displays system metrics collected by Telegraf.

import dashboard created by jmutai

import dashboard created by jmutai

From there, Grafana should automatically try to import this dashboard.

Add the previous configured InfluxDB as the dashboard datasource and click on β€œImportβ€œ.

add InfluxDB as dashboard

add InfluxDB as dashboard

Great!

We now have our first Grafana dashboard displaying Telegraf metrics.

This is what you should now see on your screen.

final Grafana dashboard

final Grafana dashboard

g – Modifying InfluxQL queries in Grafana query explorer

Sometimes when designing the dashboard, the creator specifies the hostname as β€œexample”, which is obviously different from one host to another (mine is for example named β€œmail.sysadmin.info.pl”)

To modify it, head over to the query explorer by hovering the panel title, and clicking on β€œEdit”.

edit Grafana dashboard

edit Grafana dashboard

In the β€œqueries” panel, change the host, and the panel should starting displaying data.

changing host

changing host

Go back to the dashboard, and this is what you should see.

CPU dashboard

CPU dashboard

VI – Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to setup a complete Telegraf, InfluxDB and Grafana stack on your server.

So where should you go from there?

The first thing would be to connect Telegraf to different inputs, look for existing dashboards in Grafana or design your own ones.

Troubleshooting

  • Error writing to output [influxdb] : could not write any address

Telegraf output error

Telegraf output error

Possible solution: make sure that InfluxDB is correctly running on the port 8086.

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$ sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep influxdb
influxd   17737    influxdb  128u  IPv6 1177009213    0t0  TCP *:8086 (LISTEN)

If you are having a different port, change your Telegraf configuration to forward metrics to the custom port that your InfluxDB server was assigned.


  • [outputs.influxdb] when writing to [http://localhost:8086] : 401 Unauthorized: authorization failed

Possible solution: make sure that the credentials are correctly set in your Telegraf configuration. Make sure also that you created an account for Telegraf on your InfluxDB server.


  • http: server gave HTTP response to HTTPS client

Possible solution: make sure that you enabled the https-authentication parameter in the InfluxDB configuration file. It is set by default to false.


  • x509: cannot validate certificate for 127.0.0.1 because it does not contain any IP SANs

Possible solution: your TLS verification is set, you need to enable the insecure_skip_verify parameter as the server identify cannot be verified for self-signed certificates.


  • client denied by server configuration: proxy:http://localhost:3000/api/datasources/proxy/3/query

Possible solutions:

If you are using OWASP I recommend to read this article: https://sysadmin.info.pl/en/blog/mod_security-rules-for-wordpress/ . Errors will be visible in /var/log/httpd/error_log and /var/log/httpd/modsec_audit. Eventually you can set in virtual host config file the value: SecRuleEngine Off instead On to disable mod_security for grafana virtual host.

You need to also modify the mod_evasive config file located in /etc/httpd/conf.d directory and set these values mentioned below to let grafana works properly with mod_evasive enabled.

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DOSHashTableSize 3097
DOSPageCount 20
DOSSiteCount 100
DOSPageInterval 1
DOSSiteInterval 1
DOSBlockingPeriod 10
DOSLogDir /var/log/mod_evasive

Fail2ban configuration to protect grafana against attacks.

Enter the directory which contains filters for fail2ban, located at /etc/fail2ban/filter.d

Create a new filter called grafana.conf. Type in terminal:

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vi grafana.conf

Then hit the insert button (ins) to paste the below content:

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[INCLUDES]
before = common.conf
[Definition]
failregex = ^ lvl=[a-zA-z]* msg=\"Invalid username or password\" (?:\S=(?:\".\"|\S) )remote_addr=
ignoreregex =
[Init]
datepattern = ^t=%%Y-%%m-%%dT%%H:%%M:%%S%%z

Hit Esc button, then type : and x without spaces and hit Enter to save and exit.

Enter the directory which contains jails for fail2ban, located at /etc/fail2ban/jail.d

Create a new jail called grafana.local. Type in terminal”

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vi grafana.local

Then hit the insert button (ins) to paste the below content:

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[grafana]
enabled = true
port = http,https
filter = grafana
action = iptables-allports
#action = firewallcmd-allports //if you are using firewalld instead iptables
logpath = /var/log/grafana/grafana.log
bantime = 172800
maxretry = 1

Hit Esc button, then type : and x without spaces and hit Enter to save and exit.

Restart the fail2ban by typing in terminal:

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systemctl restart fail2ban

Check your fail2ban filter by typing in terminal:

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fail2ban-regex /var/log/grafana/grafana.log /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/grafana.conf

References

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QA & Linux Specialist