Telegraf: Ubuntu telegraf.conf use enviornment variables

[unniksk]

I am using Telegraf - version 1.0.0
I tried using environment variables in telegraf.conf but Telegraf is not replacing them.

2016/09/22 09:08:13 Tags enabled: environment=$APP_ENV host=863eeea1c23b owner=$APP_OWNER stack=$APP_STACK

[sparrc]

Are you running telegraf as a service? does the telegraf user have these env variables? try sudo -u telegraf printenv

[sparrc]

closing for lack of updates, feel free to reopen if it's not apermission issue

[unniksk]

Telegraf is running as a service on Ubuntu 14.04 inside a Docker container.
printenv shows the environment variables APP_ENV, APP_OWNER, APP_STACK

[sparrc]

that doesn't answer the question of whether the env vars are accessible to the telegraf user

[santhoshjoy]

This is not working for me too.

I can answer your question sparrc.
I am running telegraf as a service and when I tried the command sudo -u telegraf printenv . It doesn't print the environment variables what I export.

But in the Configuration comments It says the one below,

Environment variables can be used anywhere in this config file, simply prepend
them with $. For strings the variable must be within quotes (ie, "$STR_VAR"),
for numbers and booleans they should be plain (ie, $INT_VAR, $BOOL_VAR)

Global tags can be specified here in key="value" format.
[global_tags]
dc = "us-east-1" # will tag all metrics with dc=us-east-1
rack = "1a"
Environment variables can be used as tags, and throughout the config file
user = "$USER"

[danielnelson]

If sudo -u telegraf printenv did not print the environment variables then they are not available for telegraf. How are you defining them?

[santhoshjoy]

I am exporting those variables through bash. Also I tried setting manually like export VPCNAME="test" and tried overriding the hostname in configuration like hostname="$VPCNAME". How we have to make the environment available for telegraf?

[danielnelson]

If you export a variable from your shell, it will only affect that shell and child shells. Try putting the definitions in /etc/default/telegraf which gets sourced when the service starts.

[santhoshjoy]

Cool. That worked. Thanks danielnelson. you may need to update this information in the telegraf.conf environment variables section.