TL;DR InfluxDB Tech Tips – Configuration & Excluding Tags from Plugins with Telegraf 0.13

In this post we recap the week’s most interesting InfluxDB, Telegraf 0.13 and TICK-stack related issues, workarounds, how-tos and Q&A from GitHub, IRC and the InfluxDB Google Group that you might have missed.

Recover a lost admin user password

Q: What should I do if I forget the admin user password?

A: You’ll need to access InfluxDB to change the admin password or create a new admin user.  This requires access to the configuration file:

1. Disable http authentication in the `[http]` section of the configuration file:

[http]
enabled = true
bind-address = ":8086"
auth-enabled = false #✨

2. Restart InfluxDB:

sudo service influxdb restart

3. Connect to the CLI (no need for credentials now!):

influx

4. Reset the password or create a new admin user:

> SET PASSWORD FOR <username> = '<password>'

or

> CREATE USER <username> WITH PASSWORD '<password>' WITH ALL PRIVILEGES

5. Enable http authentication in the `[http]` section of the configuration file:

[http]
enabled = true
bind-address = ":8086"
auth-enabled = true #✨

6. Restart InfluxDB, and you’re good to go!

sudo service influxdb restart

Allow a non-admin user to USE DATABASE in the CLI

Q: I created a user and gave them full access to a database. However, that user cannot `USE` that database in the CLI:

> USE special_db
ERR: error authorizing query: <username> not authorized to execute statement 'SHOW DATABASES', requires admin privilege

A: The CLI issues a `SHOW DATABASES` command as part of the `USE` statement, and `SHOW DATABASES` is not authorized for non-admin users.

The workaround is for the user to explicitly connect to the right database when launching the CLI, for instance:

> influx -username 'username' -password 'password' -database 'special_db'

All operations for the duration of that CLI session will go against the `special_db` database.

Exclude tags from Telegraf 0.13 plugins

Q: Is it possible to prevent a plugin from emitting a tag?

A: The arguments `taginclude` and `tagexclude` are now in Master and will be available in Telegraf 0.13. See the Telegraf configuration doc for more details.

What’s next?

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