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Documentation Grafana documentation Observability as Code Grafana CLI Set up Grafana CLI

Set up Grafana CLI

You can configure Grafana CLI in two ways: using environment variables or through a configuration file.

• Environment variables are ideal for CI environments and support a single context.
• Configuration files can manage multiple contexts, making it easier to switch between different Grafana instances.

Use environment variables

Grafana CLI communicates with Grafana via its REST API, which requires authentication credentials.

At a minimum, set the URL of your Grafana instance and the organization ID:

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GRAFANA_SERVER='http://localhost:3000' GRAFANA_ORG_ID='1' grafanactl config check

Depending on your authentication method, you may also need to set:

• A token for a Grafana service account (recommended)
• A username and password for basic authentication

To persist your configuration, consider creating a context.

A full list of supported environment variables is available in the reference documentation.

Define contexts

Contexts allow you to easily switch between multiple Grafana instances. By default, the CLI uses a context named default.

To configure the default context:

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grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.server http://localhost:3000
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.org-id 1

# Authenticate with a service account token
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.token service-account-token

# Or use basic authentication
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.user admin
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.password admin

You can define additional contexts in the same way:

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grafanactl config set contexts.staging.grafana.server https://staging.grafana.example
grafanactl config set contexts.staging.grafana.org-id 1

Configuration file

Grafana CLI stores its configuration in a YAML file. The CLI determines the configuration file location in the following order:

1. If the --config flag is provided, the specified file is used.
2. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/grafanactl/config.yaml
3. If $HOME is set: $HOME/.config/grafanactl/config.yaml
4. If $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set: $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/grafanactl/config.yaml

Useful commands

Check the current configuration:

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grafanactl config check

List all available contexts:

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grafanactl config list-contexts

Switch to a specific context:

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grafanactl config use-context staging

View the full configuration:

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grafanactl config view