Support for inlined pipeline config for docker logger

[wapmorgan]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When there's need to rebuild plugin or to copy file with pipeline to pluigin directory, it's big problem.

options:
    loki-url: ...
    loki-external-labels: container_name={{.Name}}
    loki-pipeline-stage-file: /ag/app.yaml

The problem is /ag/app.yaml is should be inside plugin container, not in root fs!

Describe the solution you'd like
Allow to inline pipeline stage config in config parameter. Like this:

options:
    loki-url: ...
    loki-external-labels: container_name={{.Name}}
    loki-pipeline-stages: 
      - json:
        // ...
      - output:
       // ..

Describe alternatives you've considered
Only injecting (copying) pipeline file to plugin directory.

[cyriltovena]

Unfortunately docker options are only string value. But we are aware of the problem, on Linux it seems that you can have the file added to the plugin using a specific plugin path, there's some issues explaining this.

[wapmorgan]

@cyriltovena yes, and now we using this case - copy file to plugin rootfs and then point it in configuration, but that seems very hard to maintain. Isn't there an ability to use specific path inside plugin that can be mounted when starting plugin?

[cyriltovena]

see #1374 (comment)

[wapmorgan]

see #1374 (comment)

I do exactly the same, but that looks weird. If that's all, thanks anyway

[cyriltovena]

Would it be more helpful if the docker plugin forward log to a promtail container instance ? This way the you can easily configure promtail by mounting a host volume or a docker config ?

The downside is that you have to run a promtail container instance. This is something we've been thinking about.

[cyriltovena]

So there’s a propagated mount config, I’ll try it.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity in the past 30 days. It will be closed in 7 days if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[slim-bean]

tagging this to keepalive as I still think there is a gap in configuring the pipeline for the docker logging driver.

[wapmorgan]

So, is there any possibility for mounting config?

[cyriltovena]

Yes we're explaining this here:

#1555

[slim-bean]

@cyriltovena can you test this with the Yaml multilline string marker:

options:
    loki-url: ...
    loki-external-labels: container_name={{.Name}}
    loki-pipeline-stages:  |
      - json:
        // ...
      - output:
       // ..

Don't know if that syntax is correct?

[slim-bean]

@cyriltovena can you test this with the Yaml multilline string marker:

options:
    loki-url: ...
    loki-external-labels: container_name={{.Name}}
    loki-pipeline-stages:  |
      - json:
        // ...
      - output:
       // ..

Don't know if that syntax is correct?

[segler-alex]

i would like this solution very much.

• it is very easy to use
• compiling it/rebuilding is not very user friendly, AND it is not documented anywhere but in github issues
• mounting inside plugin did not work for me, AND is also not very easy to use
• without pipelines it is not possible to add for example log level as a tag, and as far as I understand, this is best practice if you want to filter on it, because only tags are indexed and are fast to search for

[iabughosh]

Dears,
I tried the below command according to PR #1555:
docker plugin set loki mount.source={my-path}
But I've received this error :
Error response from daemon: setting "mount" not found in the plugin configuration

I am using the latest loki-docker-driver plugin and my docker version is 19.03.8 and my OS is MacOs.

Note : Also documentation doesn't contain any steps for what is being discussed here.

[wapmorgan]

So, what about any updates?

[cyriltovena]

• without pipelines it is not possible to add for example log level as a tag, and as far as I understand, this is best practice if you want to filter on it, because only tags are indexed and are fast to search for

{app="foo"} |= "level=error" is also super fast. And not having the level label will make it so much easier to scale.

[wapmorgan]

Ok, but I tried to make a graph for loki source in grafana. And without lables it's not possible to retrieve such data as level.
After all, labels are indexed, log messages are not. If I try to retrieve all error's for last hour, it will be really long action.

[cyriltovena]

That's something we're solving very soon with logQL, actually before june ! I'll run a demo during the GrafanaCon Loki future talk.

[iabughosh]

Thanks for the update. Please inform us here if it is fixed. I really liked it!

[cyriltovena]

LogQL will help you, but what we are talking here is allowing inline config for pipeline. I'm still working on that the config improvement even though LogQL will help.

[iabughosh]

I was able to filter with LogQl. But as @wapmorgan mentioned, we need pipelines for other purposes.

[cyriltovena]

Let me know what you think about the PR.

[iabughosh]

Using in line stages is also awesome and works for me! But as I understood from the PR, you can't parse files unless it is inside the driver, You can't parse an external one, am I right?