Configure the File outputedit

The File output dumps the transactions into a file where each transaction is in a JSON format. Currently, this output is used for testing, but it can be used as input for Logstash.

To use this output, edit the Packetbeat configuration file to disable the Elasticsearch output by commenting it out, and enable the file output by adding output.file.

Example configuration:

output.file:
  path: "/tmp/packetbeat"
  filename: packetbeat
  #rotate_every_kb: 10000
  #number_of_files: 7
  #permissions: 0600
  #rotate_on_startup: true

Configuration optionsedit

You can specify the following output.file options in the packetbeat.yml config file:

enablededit

The enabled config is a boolean setting to enable or disable the output. If set to false, the output is disabled.

The default value is true.

pathedit

The path to the directory where the generated files will be saved. This option is mandatory.

The path may include the timestamp when the file output is initialized using the +FORMAT syntax where FORMAT is a valid time format, and enclosed with expansion braces: %{+FORMAT}. For example:

path: 'fileoutput-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}'

filenameedit

The name of the generated files. The default is set to the Beat name. For example, the files generated by default for Packetbeat would be "packetbeat-{{datetime}}.ndjson", "packetbeat-{{datetime}}-1.ndjson", "packetbeat-{{datetime}}-2.ndjson", and so on.

rotate_every_kbedit

The maximum size in kilobytes of each file. When this size is reached, the files are rotated. The default value is 10240 KB.

number_of_filesedit

The maximum number of files to save under path. When this number of files is reached, the oldest file is deleted, and the rest of the files are shifted from last to first. The number of files must be between 2 and 1024. The default is 7.

permissionsedit

Permissions to use for file creation. The default is 0600.

rotate_on_startupedit

If the output file already exists on startup, immediately rotate it and start writing to a new file instead of appending to the existing one. Defaults to true.

codecedit

Output codec configuration. If the codec section is missing, events will be json encoded.

See Change the output codec for more information.