Update the registry fileedit

The registry file stores the state and location information that Filebeat uses to track where it was last reading. Under Logstash Forwarder, this file was called .logstash-fowarder. For Filebeat, the file was renamed. The name varies depending on the package type:

  • data/registry for .tar.gz and .tgz archives
  • /var/lib/filebeat/registry for DEB and RPM packages
  • c:\ProgramData\filebeat\registry for the Windows zip file

For enhancement reasons, especially for Windows, the structure of the registry file has changed. This makes migrating the file complex and leads to potential errors.

Instead of migrating the registry file, we recommend that you start Filebeat on the same host where Logstash Forwarder is running, and send the log files to a different index. This will start indexing from scratch. If you want to start reading at the end of all files, you can set the tail_files option in the Filebeat configuration file to true.

Using this approach allows you to keep the old Logstash Forwarder running and then slowly migrate over to Filebeat.