Why is the promtail_config_positions empty by default?

[patrickjahns]

Why is the promtail_config_positions empty by default?

[patrickjahns]

It was kept empty to use the default from loki and allow to override it when the environment requires this.

When looking at upstream, it will default to /var/log/positions.yml - https://github.com/grafana/loki/blob/master/pkg/promtail/positions/positions.go#L33

Possible ways forward that I see:

• define the variable per default and ensure that file is writeable by the promtail user/group
• ensure that promtail is added to the syslog group per default, then the any file in /var/log/* would be writeable by promtail

Open to further suggestions and happy to accept a PR :-)

[funkyfuture]

i hope to come back w/ a pr when i'm through w/ my whole setup. just saying that /var/log/… seems wrong, /tmp/… is okay and working, but /var/promtail/positions.yml makes the most correct impression to me.