loki/docs/sources/get-started/quick-start.md

---
title: Quickstart to run Loki locally
menuTitle: Loki quickstart
weight: 200
description: How to create and use a local Loki cluster for testing and evaluation purposes.
killercoda:
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    The killercoda front matter and the HTML comments that start '<!-- INTERACTIVE ' are used by a transformation tool that converts this Markdown source into a Killercoda tutorial.

    You can find the tutorial in https://github.com/grafana/killercoda/tree/staging/loki/loki-quickstart.

    Changes to this source file affect the Killercoda tutorial.

    For more information about the transformation tool, refer to https://github.com/grafana/killercoda/blob/staging/docs/transformer.md.
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  title: Loki Quickstart Demo
  description: This sandbox provides an online enviroment for testing the Loki quickstart demo.
  details:
    finish:
      text: finish.md
  backend:
    imageid: ubuntu
---

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# Quickstart to run Loki locally

If you want to experiment with Loki, you can run Loki locally using the Docker Compose file that ships with Loki. It runs Loki in a [monolithic deployment](https://grafana.com/docs/loki/<LOKI_VERSION>/get-started/deployment-modes/#monolithic-mode) mode and includes a sample application to generate logs.

The Docker Compose configuration runs the following components, each in its own container:

- **flog**: which generates log lines.
  [flog](https://github.com/mingrammer/flog) is a log generator for common log formats.

- **Grafana Alloy**: which scrapes the log lines from flog, and pushes them to Loki through the gateway.
- **Gateway** (nginx) which receives requests and redirects them to the appropriate container based on the request's URL.
- **Loki read component**: which runs a Query Frontend and a Querier.
- **Loki write component**: which runs a Distributor and an Ingester.
- **Loki backend component**: which runs an Index Gateway, Compactor, Ruler, Bloom Compactor (experimental), and Bloom Gateway (experimental).
- **Minio**: which Loki uses to store its index and chunks.
- **Grafana**: which provides visualization of the log lines captured within Loki.

{{< figure max-width="75%" src="/media/docs/loki/get-started-flog-v3.png" caption="Getting started sample application" alt="Getting started sample application" >}}

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## Before you begin

{{< admonition type="tip" >}}
Alternatively, you can try out this example in our interactive learning environment: [Loki Quickstart Sandbox](https://killercoda.com/grafana-labs/course/loki/loki-quickstart).

It's a fully configured environment with all the dependencies already installed.

![Interactive](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/killercoda/prod/assets/loki-ile.svg)
{{< /admonition >}}

- Install [Docker](https://docs.docker.com/install)
- Install [Docker Compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/install)

## Interactive Learning Environment

{{< admonition type="note" >}}
The Interactive Learning Environment is in trial.

Provide feedback, report bugs, and raise issues in the [Grafana Killercoda repository](https://github.com/grafana/killercoda).
{{< /admonition >}}

Try out this demo within our interactive learning environment: [Loki Quickstart Sandbox](https://killercoda.com/grafana-labs/course/loki/loki-quickstart)

- You must have a free Killercoda account to verify you aren't a bot.
- Tutorial instructions are located on the left-side of the screen.
  Click to move on to the next section.
- All commands run inside the interactive terminal.
- You can access Grafana with the URL links provided within the sandbox.

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## Install Loki and collecting sample logs

<!-- INTERACTIVE ignore START -->

{{< admonition type="note" >}}
This quickstart assumes you are running Linux.
{{< /admonition >}}

<!-- INTERACTIVE ignore END -->

**To install Loki locally, follow these steps:**

1. Create a directory called `evaluate-loki` for the demo environment.
   Make `evaluate-loki` your current working directory:

   <!-- INTERACTIVE exec START -->

   ```bash
   mkdir evaluate-loki
   cd evaluate-loki
   ```

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1. Download `loki-config.yaml`, `alloy-local-config.yaml`, and `docker-compose.yaml`:

   <!-- INTERACTIVE exec START -->

   ```bash
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/main/examples/getting-started/loki-config.yaml -O loki-config.yaml
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/main/examples/getting-started/alloy-local-config.yaml -O alloy-local-config.yaml
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/main/examples/getting-started/docker-compose.yaml -O docker-compose.yaml
   ```

    <!-- INTERACTIVE exec END -->

1. Deploy the sample Docker image.

   With `evaluate-loki` as the current working directory, start the demo environment using `docker compose`:

   <!-- INTERACTIVE ignore START -->

   ```bash
   docker compose up -d
   ```

   <!-- INTERACTIVE ignore END -->

   {{< docs/ignore >}}
   <!-- INTERACTIVE exec START -->

   ```bash
   docker-compose up -d
   ```

   <!-- INTERACTIVE exec END -->

   {{< /docs/ignore >}}

   At the end of the command, you should see something similar to the following:

   <!-- INTERACTIVE ignore START -->

   ```console
   ✔ Network evaluate-loki_loki          Created      0.1s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-minio-1     Started      0.6s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-flog-1      Started      0.6s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-backend-1   Started      0.8s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-write-1     Started      0.8s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-read-1      Started      0.8s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-gateway-1   Started      1.1s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-grafana-1   Started      1.4s
   ✔ Container evaluate-loki-alloy-1     Started      1.4s
   ```

   <!-- INTERACTIVE ignore END -->

   {{< docs/ignore >}}

   ```console
   Creating evaluate-loki_flog_1  ... done
   Creating evaluate-loki_minio_1 ... done
   Creating evaluate-loki_read_1  ... done
   Creating evaluate-loki_write_1 ... done
   Creating evaluate-loki_gateway_1 ... done
   Creating evaluate-loki_alloy_1   ... done
   Creating evaluate-loki_grafana_1 ... done
   Creating evaluate-loki_backend_1 ... done
   ```

   {{< /docs/ignore >}}

1. (Optional) Verify that the Loki cluster is up and running.

   - The read component returns `ready` when you browse to [http://localhost:3101/ready](http://localhost:3101/ready).
     The message `Query Frontend not ready: not ready: number of schedulers this worker is connected to is 0` shows until the read component is ready.
   - The write component returns `ready` when you browse to [http://localhost:3102/ready](http://localhost:3102/ready).
     The message `Ingester not ready: waiting for 15s after being ready` shows until the write component is ready.

1. (Optional) Verify that Grafana Alloy is running.
   - You can access the Grafana Alloy UI at [http://localhost:12345](http://localhost:12345).

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## View your logs in Grafana

After you have collected logs, you will want to view them.
You can view your logs using the command line interface, [LogCLI](/docs/loki/<LOKI_VERSION>/query/logcli/), but the easiest way to view your logs is with Grafana.

1. Use Grafana to query the Loki data source.

   The test environment includes [Grafana](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/), which you can use to query and observe the sample logs generated by the flog application.

   You can access the Grafana cluster by browsing to [http://localhost:3000](http://localhost:3000).

   The Grafana instance in this demonstration has a Loki [data source](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/loki/) already configured.

   {{< figure src="/media/docs/loki/grafana-query-builder-v2.png" caption="Grafana Explore" alt="Grafana Explore" >}}

1. From the Grafana main menu, click the **Explore** icon (1) to open the Explore tab.

   To learn more about Explore, refer to the [Explore](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/explore/) documentation.

1. From the menu in the dashboard header, select the Loki data source (2).

   This displays the Loki query editor.

   In the query editor you use the Loki query language, [LogQL](https://grafana.com/docs/loki/<LOKI_VERSION>/query/), to query your logs.
   To learn more about the query editor, refer to the [query editor documentation](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/loki/query-editor/).

1. The Loki query editor has two modes (3):

   - [Builder mode](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/loki/query-editor/#builder-mode), which provides a visual query designer.
   - [Code mode](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/loki/query-editor/#code-mode), which provides a feature-rich editor for writing LogQL queries.

   Next we’ll walk through a few simple queries using both the builder and code views.

1. Click **Code** (3) to work in Code mode in the query editor.

   Here are some sample queries to get you started using LogQL.
   These queries assume that you followed the instructions to create a directory called `evaluate-loki`.

   If you installed in a different directory, you’ll need to modify these queries to match your installation directory.

   After copying any of these queries into the query editor, click **Run Query** (4) to execute the query.

   1. View all the log lines which have the container label `evaluate-loki-flog-1`:

      ```bash
      {container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"}
      ```

      In Loki, this is a log stream.

      Loki uses [labels](https://grafana.com/docs/loki/<LOKI_VERSION>/get-started/labels/) as metadata to describe log streams.

      Loki queries always start with a label selector.
      In the previous query, the label selector is `{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"}`.

   1. To view all the log lines which have the container label `evaluate-loki-grafana-1`:

      ```bash
      {container="evaluate-loki-grafana-1"}
      ```

   1. Find all the log lines in the `{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"}` stream that contain the string `status`:

      ```bash
      {container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"} |= `status`
      ```

   1. Find all the log lines in the `{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"}` stream where the JSON field `status` has the value `404`:

      ```bash
      {container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"} | json | status=`404`
      ```

   1. Calculate the number of logs per second where the JSON field `status` has the value `404`:

      ```bash
      sum by(container) (rate({container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"} | json | status=`404` [$__auto]))
      ```

   The final query is a metric query which returns a time series.
   This makes Grafana draw a graph of the results.

   You can change the type of graph for a different view of the data.
   Click **Bars** to view a bar graph of the data.

1. Click the **Builder** tab (3) to return to builder mode in the query editor.
   1. In builder mode, click **Kick start your query** (5).
   1. Expand the **Log query starters** section.
   1. Select the first choice, **Parse log lines with logfmt parser**, by clicking **Use this query**.
   1. On the Explore tab, click **Label browser**, in the dialog select a container and click **Show logs**.

For a thorough introduction to LogQL, refer to the [LogQL reference](https://grafana.com/docs/loki/<LOKI_VERSION>/query/).

## Sample queries (code view)

Here are some more sample queries that you can run using the Flog sample data.

To see all the log lines that flog has generated, enter the LogQL query:

```bash
{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"}
```

The flog app generates log lines for simulated HTTP requests.

To see all `GET` log lines, enter the LogQL query:

```bash
{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"} |= "GET"
```

To see all `POST` methods, enter the LogQL query:

```bash
{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"} |= "POST"
```

To see every log line with a 401 status (unauthorized error), enter the LogQL query:

```bash
{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"} | json | status="401"
```

To see every log line that doesn't contain the text `401`:

```bash
{container="evaluate-loki-flog-1"} != "401"
```

For more examples, refer to the [query documentation](https://grafana.com/docs/loki/<LOKI_VERSION>/query/query_examples/).

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## Complete metrics, logs, traces, and profiling example

If you would like to run a demonstration environment that includes Mimir, Loki, Tempo, and Grafana, you can use [Introduction to Metrics, Logs, Traces, and Profiling in Grafana](https://github.com/grafana/intro-to-mlt).
It's a self-contained environment for learning about Mimir, Loki, Tempo, and Grafana.

The project includes detailed explanations of each component and annotated configurations for a single-instance deployment.
You can also push the data from the environment to [Grafana Cloud](https://grafana.com/cloud/).