influxdata/telegraf

Output to stdout by default

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#16,718 opened on Apr 2, 2025

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feature requesthelp wantedsize/s

Description

Use Case

Modern applications use an approach called zero configuration, in which the default configuration file is 100% valid.

Today, telegraf takes a more classical approach, requiring the user to customize configuration. Otherwise the application crashes. That's an awful out of the box experience.

Instead of bombing out with generic parse error messages on the stock configuration file, telegraf should automatically set outputs.file to ["stdout"].

By the way, the default configuration file has many gaps in terms of failing to mention the default configuration, for about half of the assorted fields. Many of the fields fail to nest comments, further complicating the default behavior.

The documentation occasionally hints at a need to customize outputs, but that's still a far cry from zeroconf.

Expected behavior

Output to stdout by default, so that the telegraf config default configuration file finally becomes 100% valid.

Actual behavior

$ telegraf config >telegraf.config
$ telegraf -config telegraf.conf
2025-04-02T16:58:47Z I! Loading config: telegraf.conf
2025-04-02T16:58:47Z E! [telegraf] Error running agent: no outputs found, probably invalid config file provided

Additional info

No response

Contributor guide

Tech stack
go
Domain
backenddeveloper experience
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Go programmingTelegraf architecture
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
60
Research direction
The main challenge is to modify the default configuration parsing to include stdout as the default output. Look at the config loading logic in agent/config.go or similar. The issue suggests that the default config file should be valid without any user changes. Investigate how outputs are initialized and ensure that if no output config is provided, a default stdout output is used.