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Configuration

Environment Variables¶

You can adjust the configuration of Sematext Agent with additional environment variables:

Variable	Description
Firewall and Proxy Settings
PROXY_HOST, PROXY_PORT, PROXY_PASSWORD, PROXY_USERNAME	These variables specify the settings for the proxy server.
Docker Connection Options
DOCKER_TRANSPORT	Defines the transport protocol for communication with Docker daemon. The default transport is UNIX domain socket (`unix:///var/run/docker.sock`). For TCP transport you have to specify an IP address that's reachable from container (`DOCKER_TRANSPORT=tcp://ip-reachable-from-container:2375/`).
DOCKER_CERT_PATH	Specifies the path to your certificate files when communication with Docker daemon is carried out over secure channel.
Container Monitoring
CONTAINER_ENABLED	Determines whether the container collector is enabled. Default value is `true`. To disable container collector set `CONTAINER_ENABLED=false`.
CONTAINER_MATCH_BY_IMAGE, CONTAINER_MATCH_BY_NAME	These variables control the inclusion of detected containers either by image or container name. Can contain a comma separated list of full container/images names or regular expression patterns (`CONTAINER_MATCH_BY_IMAGE=nginx,mongo*`).
CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_IMAGE, CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_NAME	These variables control the exclusion of detected containers either by image or container name. Can contain a comma separated list of full container/images names or regular expression patterns (`CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_IMAGE=nginx,mongo`). Important*: By default, the agent skips the following images: `CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_IMAGE=sematext/agent,sematext/app-agent,timberio/vector`. If you modify this environment variable, please ensure to append these options to your configuration.
Kubernetes Settings
KUBERNETES_ENABLED	Specifies if the Kubernetes monitoring functionality is active. Default value is `true`. To disable Kubernetes collector set `KUBERNETES_ENABLED=false`.
KUBERNETES_EVENTS_NAMESPACE	Designates a namespace for Kubernetes event watcher. By default all namespaces are watched for Kubernetes events and forwarded to event/log receivers.
KUBERNETES_NAMESPACES	Defines the comma separated list of namespaces that are queried for Kubernetes resources such as pods or deployments. By default all namespaces are fetched. You can adjust specific namespaces such as `KUBERNETES_NAMESPACES=default,kube-system`.
KUBERNETES_INTERVAL	Defines the collection interval for Kubernetes resources (default 10s)
KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_ID	Uniquely identifies the cluster where agent is deployed
KUBERNETES_KUBELET_AUTH_TOKEN	Specifies the path for account service token
KUBERNETES_KUBELET_CA_PATH	Determines the file path for the certificate authority utilized during TLS verification
KUBERNETES_KUBELET_CERT_PATH	Determines the file path for the certificate file utilized during TLS verification
KUBERNETES_KUBELET_KEY_PATH	Determines the file path for the private key utilized during TLS verification
KUBERNETES_ETCD_CA_PATH	Determines the file path for the certificate authority utilized during TLS verification
KUBERNETES_ETCD_KEY_PATH	Determines the file path for the private key utilized during TLS verification
KUBERNETES_ETCD_CERT_PATH	Determines the file path for the certificate file utilized during TLS verification
KUBERNETES_KUBELET_INSECURE_SKIP_TLS_VERIFY	Indicates whether to skip TLS verification
KUBERNETES_KUBELET_METRICS_PORT	Specifies the port where kubelet Prometheus metrics are exposed (default 10250)
Process Monitoring
PROCESS_ENABLED	Specifies if process metrics collection is enabled. To disable process metrics collector set `PROCESS_ENABLED=false`.
Network Monitoring
NETRACER_ENABLED	Controls whether network topology collector is turned on. Network tracer is disabled by default. To enable network tracer set `NETRACER_ENABLED=true`. In order to capture network traffic from the host, you should start the container with host networking by passing the `--network=host` argument to Docker engine. This is only required when pcap network tracer is used.
NETRACER_INPUT_FILTER, NETRACER_OUTPUT_FILTER	When specified, applies filtering expressions to all inbound/outbound packets (`NETRACER_INPUT_FILTER="dst port 8923 and tcp"`).
NETRACER_INTERFACES	A comma-separated list of network interfaces to monitor. By default all interfaces are tracked.
NETRACER_LOOPBACK	Determines whether loopback interfaces should be captured for network traffic. By default network packets are not captured from loopback interfaces.
NETRACER_EBPF_TRACK_TCP	Determines whether TCP connections are tracked by ebpf tracer. By default TCP traffic statistics are collected.
NETRACER_EBPF_TRACK_UDP	Determines whether UDP connections are tracked by ebpf tracer. By default UDP traffic statistics are collected.
Troubleshooting Options
CPUPROFILE	Name of the file where `pprof` CPU profile is dumped. When provided this turns on the CPU profiling and writes data to a given file.
LOGGING_LEVEL	Defines the minimal allowed log level. Default log level is `info`. You can choose between `debug`, `info`, `warn/warning`, `error`, `fatal` and `panic`.
LOGGING_WRITE_EVENTS	Defines whether event payloads are written to standard output stream. Useful for debugging. You can disable this feature by passing `LOGGING_WRITE_EVENTS=false` environment variable during container bootstrap.
Other Agent Settings
INTERVAL	Specifies the collection interval for metrics collectors. Default interval is `10s`. You can specify a duration for collection interval in seconds, minutes or hours (`INTERVAL=1m`).
JOURNAL_DIR	Defines the data directory where failed events are stored. Agent periodically scans this directory and resends events to the backend.
JOURNAL_RETRY_INTERVAL	Specifies how often journal directory is scanned for failed events. Default interval is `30s`. You can specify a different interval in either seconds, minutes or hours (`JOURNAL_RETRY_INTERVAL=5m`)
AUTODISCO_TEMPLATES_PATH	Defines the location of the `autodisco.yml` file that contains definitions of patterns involved in app auto-discovery.
HOSTNAME_ALIAS	When specified it overrides the original host name.

Populating Environment Variables in Kubernetes¶

To populate environment variables in Kubernetes, you need to propagate the variables to the pods by including them in the DaemonSet manifest within the env section. Consider the following example manifest:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: sematext-agent
  labels:
    app: sematext-agent
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: sematext-agent
 # ...
          env:
            - name: AUTODISCO_VECTOR_SERVICE_ACCOUNT
              value: sematext-agent-vector
            - name: INFRA_TOKEN
              value: <your-infra-token>
            - name: KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_ID
              value: <REPLACE_WITH_CLUSTER_NAME>
            - name: API_SERVER_PORT
              value: "8675"
            - name: REGION
              value: US
          livenessProbe:
            httpGet:
              path: /health
              port: 8675
# ...

You can add additional environment variables by following the name and value format, where the former is the name of the variable and the latter is the value. For example, to skip certain containers based on the image like nginx, add the following lines:

            - name: CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_IMAGE
              value: nginx

If you are using the helm installation option instead of kubectl, you can add environment variables using the --set directive. Also, you can skip multiple images by separating multiple image names with a comma, as in the following example:

helm install st-agent \
  --set infraToken=<your-infra-token> \
  --set region=US \
  --set clusterName=REPLACE_WITH_CLUSTER_NAME \
  --set CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_IMAGE=nginx,apache/httpd \
  --namespace=sematext \
  --create-namespace \
  sematext/sematext-agent

Note: The CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_IMAGE values will search for any substring match among the discovered images. Therefore, if you wish to skip the apache/httpd image, you can simply use httpd. This applies similarly to other matching and skipping options such as CONTAINER_MATCH_BY_IMAGE, CONTAINER_MATCH_BY_NAME, and CONTAINER_SKIP_BY_NAME.