Management

The sections below show you how to administer your Vector instance—start, stop, reload, etc.—in a variety of settings:

• Vector executable (no process manager)
• Linux (systemctl process manager)
• macOS (Homebrew service manager)
• Windows
• Docker
• Kubernetes with Helm

linkVector executable

To manage the Vector executable directly, without a process manager:

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1vector --config /etc/vector/vector.toml
2
3# Or supply a JSON or YAML config file

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Reload" >}}

1killall -s SIGHUP vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< /tabs >}}

linkLinux

linkAPT, dpkg, RPM, YUM

If you've installed Vector using APT, dpkg, RPM, or YUM, you can manage it using systemctl.

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1sudo systemctl start vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Stop" >}}

1sudo systemctl stop vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Reload" >}}

1systemctl kill -s HUP --kill-who=main vector.service

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Restart" >}}

1sudo systemctl restart vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< /tabs >}}

linkNix

If you've installed Vector using Nix, you can manage it using the commands laid out in the Vector executable section.

linkmacOS

If you're running Vector on macOS, you can manage it using either the executable commands or Homebrew.

linkHomebrew

If you've installed Vector using Homebrew, you can manage it using Homebrew's services utility.

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1brew services start vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Stop" >}}

1brew services stop vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Reload" >}}

1killall -S SIGHUP vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Restart" >}}

1brew services restart vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< /tabs >}}

linkWindows

If you're running Vector on Windows (perhaps you installed it using MSI), you can manage it using these commands:

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1C:\Program Files\Vector\bin\vector \
2  --config C:\Program Files\Vector\config\vector.toml
3
4# Or supply a JSON or YAML config file

{{< /tab >}} {{< /tabs >}}

linkDocker

If you're running Vector using Docker, the command interface is the same across all platforms.

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1docker run \
2  -d \
3  -v ~/vector.toml:/etc/vector/vector.toml:ro \
4  -p 8686:8686 \
5  timberio/vector:{{< version >}}-alpine

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Stop" >}}

1docker stop timberio/vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Reload" >}}

1docker kill --signal=HUP timberio/vector

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Restart" >}}

1docker restart -f $(docker ps -aqf "name=vector")

{{< /tab >}} {{< /tabs >}}

The commands above involve configuring Vector using TOML, but you can also use JSON or YAML. You can also use one of three image variants (the commands assume alpine):

Variant	Image basis
alpine	Alpine, a Linux distro built around musl libc and BusyBox
debian	The debian-slim image, which is a smaller and more compact version of the standard debian image
distroless	The Distroless project, which provides extremely lean images with no package managers, shells, or other inessential utilities

linkHelm

To get Vector running on Kubernetes using the Helm package manager:

{{< jump "/docs/setup/installation/package-managers/helm" >}}

Once Vector is running in Kubernetes, you can manage it using kubectl:

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1kubectl rollout restart --namespace vector daemonset/vector-agent

{{< /tab >}} {{< tab title="Restart Aggregator" >}}

1kubectl rollout restart --namespace vector statefulset/vector-aggregator

{{< /tab >}} {{< /tabs >}}

linkReloading

As you can see above, many administrative interfaces for Vector enable you to trigger a restart of a Vector instance while it's running. There are a few things that you should know about reloading.

linkAutomatic reloading on config change

You can make Vector automatically reload itself when its configuration file changes by setting the --watch-config or -w flag when you first start your Vector instance.

linkAutomatic reload on configuration change

Vector provides an option

linkHow it works

Running Vector instances accept the IPC signals and produce the exit codes listed below.

{{< administration/process >}}