Live reloading

You can configure Filebeat to dynamically reload external configuration files when there are changes. This feature is available for input and module configurations that are loaded as external configuration files. You cannot use this feature to reload the main filebeat.yml configuration file.

To configure this feature, you specify a path (Glob) to watch for configuration changes. When the files found by the Glob change, new inputs and/or modules are started and stopped according to changes in the configuration files.

This feature is especially useful in container environments where one container is used to tail logs for services running in other containers on the same host.

To enable dynamic config reloading, you specify the path and reload options under filebeat.config.inputs or filebeat.config.modules sections. For example:

filebeat.config.inputs:
  enabled: true
  path: configs/*.yml
  reload.enabled: true
  reload.period: 10s

path

A Glob that defines the files to check for changes.

reload.enabled

When set to true, enables dynamic config reload.

reload.period

Specifies how often the files are checked for changes. Do not set the period to less than 1s because the modification time of files is often stored in seconds. Setting the period to less than 1s will result in unnecessary overhead.