Installing a Cribl Leader on CentOS 10 Host

Objective

This article will provide step by step instructions for installing a Cribl Suite Leader, which manages both Stream and Edge for customer managed deployments, on a CentOS 10 host.

Environment

• OS: CentOS 10

Procedure

1. Log in to the CentOS 10 host with a user account that has sudo privileges.

2. Install required OS dependencies (Git) and optionally update system packages:

   • Install Git:

     sudo dnf install git

   • (Optional) Update system packages:

     sudo dnf update

3. Create a dedicated cribl system user that will own and operate Cribl processes and files:

   sudo useradd cribl

   This user will own the Cribl installation directory and run the Cribl services (non‑root execution).

4. Create the Cribl home directory structure under /opt/cribl-stream, including a location for certificates:

   sudo mkdir -p /opt/cribl-stream/security/certs/leader

5. If you have TLS certificates pre-staged on the host, copy them into the Cribl certificate directory so that you may easily assign permissions to the cribl user

   sudo cp /opt/store-certs/leader/* /opt/cribl-stream/security/certs/leader/

6. Download and extract the latest Cribl Suite tarball into /opt/cribl-stream to create the Cribl home directory (/opt/cribl-stream/cribl):

   sudo curl -Lso - $(curl -s https://cdn.cribl.io/dl/latest) | sudo tar zxvf - -C /opt/cribl-stream

7. Assign ownership of the entire /opt/cribl-stream directory tree to the cribl user so that Cribl files can be read, modified, and executed by the cribl user

   sudo chown -R cribl:cribl /opt/cribl-stream

8. Configure the CRIBL_HOME environment variable for the cribl user by adding it to the user’s .bash_profile:

   echo "CRIBL_HOME=/opt/cribl-stream/cribl" | sudo tee -a /home/cribl/.bash_profile

9. Register Cribl as a systemd service using the Cribl binary, so that the Leader can be managed like any other service on the host:

   sudo /opt/cribl-stream/cribl/bin/cribl boot-start enable -m systemd -u cribl

10. Enable the Cribl service to start automatically at system boot and then start the service:

    sudo systemctl enable cribl sudo systemctl start cribl

11. Verify that the Cribl service is running correctly using systemctl:

    sudo systemctl status cribl

12. (Optional) Practice managing the Cribl service with systemd controls as needed:

    • Stop Cribl:

      sudo systemctl stop cribl

    • Start Cribl:

      sudo systemctl start cribl

    • Restart Cribl:

      sudo systemctl restart cribl

At this point, the Cribl Suite Leader is installed on the CentOS 10 host, registered as a systemd service, and configured to start on boot.

Additional Information

The installation flow described above follows the four logical sections outlined in an installation script available here:

• Variable definition (install path and process owner).

• OS dependencies (Git, cribl user).

• Directory structure and extraction of the Cribl tarball into /opt/cribl-stream/cribl.

• Environment configuration and systemd registration via cribl boot-start and systemctl.