This post is only about getting Victoria Logs running on FreeBSD. A future post will go over configuration and getting logs in. I’m hoping Victoria Logs can fill the role which ElasticSearch once tried to fill, but failed; it was too finicky and fragile for my use.
In this post:
- FreeBSD 15.0
- victoria-logs-1.50.0_2
- mkjail-0.0.8
Jail creation
I’m going to run this in a jail, like most things. You don’t have to. I’m using sysutils/mkjail for this.
[19:08 r730-01 dvl ~] % sudo mkjail create -a amd64 -v 15.0-RELEASE -j logs
Creating data02/jails/logs...
Extracting base into /jails/logs...
Extracting lib32 into /jails/logs...
Copying in default flavor...
Updating logs jail...
src component not installed, skipped
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 15.0-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Preparing to download files... done.
The following files will be removed as part of updating to
...
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Tiraspol
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Mexico/BajaNorte
/usr/share/zoneinfo/tzdata.zi
/usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab
/usr/share/zoneinfo/zone1970.tab
Installing updates... done.
Now put something like the following in /etc/jail.conf:
exec.start = "/bin/sh /etc/rc";
exec.stop = "/bin/sh /etc/rc.shutdown jail";
exec.clean;
mount.devfs;
path = /jails/$name;
securelevel = 2;
logs {
host.hostname = "logs";
ip4.addr = 127.1.0.201;
ip6.addr = 2001:0db8::141;
persist;
}
and then you can start the jail like so:
# service jail start logs
That’s not the jail configuration I used. I used this:
[19:57 r730-01 dvl /usr/local/etc/jail.conf.d] % cat logs.conf
logs {
ip4.addr = "$bridge|10.55.0.18";
}
Separate file system
I created a separate file system for Victoria Logs. Because I can. You don’t have to. However, this will let me snapshot, backup, etc.
I discovered the directory name in the rc.d script (/usr/local/etc/rc.d/victoria_logs).
[19:40 r730-01 dvl /usr/local/etc/jail.conf.d] % sudo zfs create -o mountpoint=/jails/logs/var/db/victoria-logs -o recordsize=128K -o compression=zstd data04/victoria-logs [19:42 r730-01 dvl /usr/local/etc/jail.conf.d] % [19:42 r730-01 dvl /usr/local/etc/jail.conf.d] % ls -ld /jails/logs/var/db/victoria-logs drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 2 2026.06.14 19:42 /jails/logs/var/db/victoria-logs/
And here it is from within the jail:
[19:47 logs dvl ~] % ls -ld /var/db/victoria-logs drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 2 2026.06.14 19:42 /var/db/victoria-logs/
Looking in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/victoria_logs, I see we have a user and a group defined. Let’s adjust the permissions on that directory:
[19:47 logs dvl ~] % sudo chown victoria-logs:victoria-logs /var/db/victoria-logs [19:48 logs dvl ~] % id victoria-logs uid=363(victoria-logs) gid=363(victoria-logs) groups=363(victoria-logs) [19:48 logs dvl ~] % ls -ld /var/db/victoria-logs drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria-logs victoria-logs 2 2026.06.14 19:42 /var/db/victoria-logs/ [19:48 logs dvl ~] %
Enable, and start:
[19:38 logs dvl ~] % sudo sysrc victoria_logs_enable="YES" victoria_logs_enable: -> YES [19:48 logs dvl ~] % sudo service victoria_logs start Starting victoria_logs. [19:49 logs dvl ~] % ps auwwxd | grep victoria dvl 96808 0.0 0.0 14164 2680 4 S+J 19:50 0:00.00 `-- grep victoria victoria-logs 92857 0.0 0.0 14184 2556 - SsJ 19:49 0:00.00 daemon: victoria_logs[92858] (daemon) victoria-logs 92858 0.0 0.0 1274348 14292 - SJ 19:49 0:00.05 - /usr/local/bin/victoria-logs -storageDataPath=/var/db/victoria-logs -retentionPeriod=1 -httpListenAddr=:9428 [19:50 logs dvl ~] % ls -l /var/db/victoria-logs total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 victoria-logs victoria-logs 0 2026.06.14 19:49 flock.lock drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria-logs victoria-logs 2 2026.06.14 19:49 partitions/ [19:50 logs dvl ~] % ls -l /var/db/victoria-logs/partitions total 0
Where is it listening?
[20:06 logs dvl ~] % sockstat -4 | grep vict victoria-logs victoria-l 92858 5 tcp4 10.55.0.18:9428 *:*
The logs
The app logs are over here:
[20:07 logs dvl ~] % sudo ls -l /var/log/victoria_logs total 9 -rw------- 1 victoria-logs victoria-logs 1663 Jun 14 19:49 victoria_logs.log [20:07 logs dvl ~] % sudo tail /var/log/victoria_log/victoria_logs.log tail: /var/log/victoria_log/victoria_logs.log: No such file or directory [20:07 logs dvl ~] % sudo tail /var/log/victoria_logs/victoria_logs.log 2026-06-14T19:49:51.937Z info VictoriaMetrics/lib/logger/flag.go:13 command-line flags 2026-06-14T19:49:51.937Z info VictoriaMetrics/lib/logger/flag.go:20 -httpListenAddr=":9428" 2026-06-14T19:49:51.937Z info VictoriaMetrics/lib/logger/flag.go:20 -retentionPeriod="1" 2026-06-14T19:49:51.937Z info VictoriaMetrics/lib/logger/flag.go:20 -storageDataPath="/var/db/victoria-logs" 2026-06-14T19:49:51.938Z info /wrkdirs/usr/ports/net-mgmt/victoria-logs/work/VictoriaLogs-1.50.0/app/victoria-logs/main.go:43 starting VictoriaLogs at "[:9428]"... 2026-06-14T19:49:51.938Z info /wrkdirs/usr/ports/net-mgmt/victoria-logs/work/VictoriaLogs-1.50.0/app/vlstorage/main.go:145 opening storage at -storageDataPath=/var/db/victoria-logs 2026-06-14T19:49:52.007Z info /wrkdirs/usr/ports/net-mgmt/victoria-logs/work/VictoriaLogs-1.50.0/app/vlstorage/main.go:151 successfully opened storage in 0.069 seconds; smallParts: 0; bigParts: 0; smallPartBlocks: 0; bigPartBlocks: 0; smallPartRows: 0; bigPartRows: 0; smallPartSize: 0 bytes; bigPartSize: 0 bytes 2026-06-14T19:49:52.008Z info /wrkdirs/usr/ports/net-mgmt/victoria-logs/work/VictoriaLogs-1.50.0/app/victoria-logs/main.go:55 started VictoriaLogs in 0.070 seconds; see https://docs.victoriametrics.com/victorialogs/ 2026-06-14T19:49:52.009Z info VictoriaMetrics/lib/httpserver/httpserver.go:146 started server at http://10.55.0.18:9428/ 2026-06-14T19:49:52.009Z info VictoriaMetrics/lib/httpserver/httpserver.go:148 pprof handlers are exposed at http://10.55.0.18:9428/debug/pprof/ [20:08 logs dvl ~] %
This seems ready to go.
I’ll push this to the website and get on with the next post covering configuration and pushing logs into the tool.
