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Grafana plugins and configuration for SystemLink Server

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grafana-plugins

Grafana plugins for SystemLink

Configuring SystemLink Server to host Grafana for the first time

To configure a SystemLink instance to host Grafana, this repo provides a PowerShell script Setup-Grafana.ps1 that automatically installs Grafana to the machine, copies over the necessary configuration to show Grafana as a plugin within SystemLink, and installs the latest release of the plugins sourced here.

To run the script, download the latest release from GitHub to the machine where SystemLink is installed, and then execute Setup-Grafana.ps1 by right-clicking > "Run With PowerShell" or by running it from the PowerShell console. If the script immediately closes without executing, you may need to configure your Execution Policy.

Caveats:

  • This setup assumes a standard install of SystemLink and Grafana. If you have custom paths, you may need to modify the variables at the start of the script.
  • Grafana v10.2.2 will be installed by default. If you need a different Grafana version, manually install it before running the script.

Updating an existing Grafana installation on a SystemLink Server instance

Note: If you have installed any custom datasources or altered config files, the changes may be overwritten. In that scenario, you should review the install powershell script and manually work through it as appropriate.

To update an existing install, first upgrade Grafana by downloading and running the following MSI: https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana-10.2.2.windows-amd64.msi

Following that, execute the powershell script in the release archive.

To run the script, download the latest release from GitHub to the machine where SystemLink is installed, extract it, and then execute Setup-Grafana.ps1 by right-clicking > "Run With PowerShell" or by running it from the PowerShell console.

Troubleshooting

Grafana UI shows Error: Fetch error: 404 Not Found Instantiating when loading a plugin

Make sure that you have run Setup-Grafana.ps1 from the directory extracted from "***-grafana-plugins.zip" that is downloaded from an official packaged release. If you run the script using just the source code, you will receive this error.

Development

Installing Grafana

https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/installation/

Configuring plugins directory

Before you can get started building plugins, you need to set up your environment for plugin development.

To discover plugins, Grafana scans a plugin directory, the location of which depends on your operating system.

  1. Clone this repo to your local machine using https://github.com/ni-kismet/grafana-plugins.

  2. Find the plugins property in the Grafana configuration file and set the plugins property to the path of the grafana-plugins directory. Refer to the Grafana configuration documentation for more information.

[paths]
plugins = "/path/to/grafana-plugins"
  1. Restart Grafana if it’s already running, to load the new configuration.

Installing additional plugins

Any external plugins installed from Grafana's plugin library or another repo should be placed in a subdirectory external-plugins.

For example, installing from the plugin library would look like this:

grafana-cli --pluginsDir "/path/to/grafana-plugins/external-plugins" plugins install <plugin-id>

Using example dashboards

The examples subdirectory contains dashboard examples using these plugins that can be imported into any Grafana instance.

Refer to the Grafana documentation for more information: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/dashboards/export-import/

You should install and configure datasource plugins before importing a dashboard, as part of the import workflow includes picking the datasource instances to be used for the new dashboard.