Install Vector on NixOS

NixOS is a Linux distribution built on top of the Nix package manager. This page covers installing and managing Vector on NixOS.

Nixpkgs has a community maintained module for Vector, the options for which may be viewed on the NixOS Search.

This can be used to deploy and configure Vector on a NixOS system, the module will also verify that the Vector configuration is valid before enabling any changes.

For example, place into a system’s configuration.nix:

services.vector = {
  enable = true;
  journaldAccess = true;
  settings = {
    sources = {
      journald.type = "journald";

      vector_metrics.type = "internal_metrics";
    };

    sinks = {
      loki = {
        type = "loki";
        inputs = [ "journald" ];
        endpoint = "https://loki.mycompany.com";
        encoding = { codec = "json"; };

        labels.source = "journald";
      };

      prometheus_exporter = {
        type = "prometheus_exporter";
        inputs = [ "vector_metrics" ];
        address = "[::]:9598"
      };
    };
  };
};

Occasionally, it’ll be necessary to provide Vector with additional permissions to access files which belong to other services. Below is an example in which Vector is granted access to log files which belong to Caddy:

  services.vector = {
    enable = true;
    journaldAccess = true;
    settings = {
      sources = {
        journald.type = "journald";

        caddy = {
          type = "file";
          include = [ "/var/log/caddy/*.log" ];
        };

        vector_metrics.type = "internal_metrics";
      };

      transforms = {
        caddy_logs_timestamp = {
          type = "remap";
          inputs = [ "caddy" ];
          source = ''
            .tmp_timestamp, err = parse_json!(.message).ts * 1000000

            if err != null {
              log("Unable to parse ts value: " + err, level: "error")
            } else {
              .timestamp = from_unix_timestamp!(to_int!(.tmp_timestamp), unit: "microseconds")
            }

            del(.tmp_timestamp)
          '';
        };
      };

      sinks = {
        loki = {
          type = "loki";
          encoding.codec = "json";
          inputs = [ "caddy_logs_timestamp" "journald" ];
          endpoint = "https://loki.mycompany.com";

          labels.source = "vector";
        };

        prometheus_exporter = {
          type = "prometheus_exporter";
          inputs = [ "vector_metrics" ];
          address = "[::]:9598";
        };
      };
    };
  };

  systemd.services.vector.serviceConfig = {
    SupplementaryGroups = [ "caddy" ];
  };

Other integration examples may be found at the NixOS test suite for Vector. These can also be run on a system with Nix with a local copy of the nixpkgs repo by executing:

nix-build -A nixosTests.vector

Install Vector on NixOS

Supported installers