Service Control

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What You'll Learn

How to start, stop, restart, and reload the Netdata Agent across different operating systems and service management systems.

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The Netdata Agent automatically starts at boot after installation, except when installed via Homebrew on macOS — see macOS (Homebrew) below.

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Important

In most cases, you need to restart the Netdata service to apply changes to configuration files. Health configuration files, which define alerts, are an exception. They can be reloaded without restarting.

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Service Restart Impact

Restarting the Netdata Agent will cause temporary gaps in your collected metrics. This occurs while the netdata process reinitializes its data collectors and database engine.

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UNIX

Using systemctl, service, or init.d

Check status

Use the commands above to check whether the Netdata Agent service is running.

You can also verify that the Agent is reachable by opening http://NODE:19999 in a browser, or by running:

curl http://NODE:19999/api/v1/info

Replace NODE with the IP address or hostname of your Agent.

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Use sudo netdatacli ping to check whether the Agent is ready. It outputs pong with exit code 0 when the Agent is ready, exit code 1 while still initializing, and exit code 255 if the Agent is unreachable.

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Using netdata

Use the netdata command, typically located at /usr/sbin/netdata, to start the Netdata daemon.

sudo netdata

If you start the daemon this way, close it with sudo killall netdata.

Using netdatacli

The Netdata Agent also comes with a CLI tool capable of performing shutdowns. Start the Agent back up using your preferred method listed above.

sudo netdatacli shutdown-agent

Reload health

No need to restart the Netdata Agent after modifying health configuration files (alerts). Use netdatacli to avoid metric collection gaps.

sudo netdatacli reload-health

Windows

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Administrator Access Required

You will need to run PowerShell as administrator.

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Using Windows Services GUI

If you prefer to manage the Agent through the GUI, you can start-stop and restart the Netdata service from the "Services" tab of Task Manager.

Using PowerShell Commands

• To check the status of Netdata, run Get-Service Netdata.
• To start Netdata, run Start-Service Netdata.
• To stop Netdata, run Stop-Service Netdata.
• To restart Netdata, run Restart-Service Netdata.

Using netdatacli

The netdatacli tool is available on Windows at the Netdata installation path (default C:\Program Files\Netdata\usr\bin\netdatacli.exe). It sends management commands to the running Agent without restarting it. Run PowerShell as Administrator and use the full path, or add the Netdata bin directory to PATH.

& "C:\Program Files\Netdata\usr\bin\netdatacli.exe" reload-health

macOS (Homebrew)

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Unlike the other installation methods on this page, a Homebrew-installed Agent does not start automatically after brew install or at boot. Homebrew only writes the service definition; you must start it explicitly with brew services start, which also registers it to launch at login.

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Using brew services

• start starts the Agent immediately and registers it to launch at login (or boot).
• stop stops the Agent immediately and unregisters it from launching at login (or boot).
• restart stops (if necessary) and starts the Agent immediately, and registers it to launch at login (or boot).

Check status

Use brew services info netdata to check whether the Agent is running.

You can also verify that the Agent is reachable by opening http://localhost:19999 in a browser, or by running:

curl http://localhost:19999/api/v1/info

Quick Reference

UNIX Commands Summary

Windows Commands Summary

macOS (Homebrew) Commands Summary