Telegraf doesn't read MQTT data from publishers other than localhost

Hello everyone,

I’m writing this post because my config used to work like 2 weeks ago, I could read MQTT data sent from any publisher, the input.mqtt consumer of my config file is linked with the broker ip.
I also receive the MQTT data sent from the publisher to the broker, I mean that the broker is functionnal and gets the data sent to it, so why the telegraf agent wont send the data to InfluxDB ? If I directly send data from the broker host machine, it works (with mosquitto_pub …) but if I publish from another source, telegraf wont transmit the data…

Here is my config file :

# Configuration for telegraf agent
[agent]
  ## Default data collection interval for all inputs
  interval = "10s"
  ## Rounds collection interval to 'interval'
  ## ie, if interval="10s" then always collect on :00, :10, :20, etc.
  round_interval = true

  ## Telegraf will send metrics to outputs in batches of at most
  ## metric_batch_size metrics.
  ## This controls the size of writes that Telegraf sends to output plugins.
  metric_batch_size = 1000

  ## Maximum number of unwritten metrics per output.  Increasing this value
  ## allows for longer periods of output downtime without dropping metrics at the
  ## cost of higher maximum memory usage.
  metric_buffer_limit = 10000

  ## Collection jitter is used to jitter the collection by a random amount.
  ## Each plugin will sleep for a random time within jitter before collecting.
  ## This can be used to avoid many plugins querying things like sysfs at the
  ## same time, which can have a measurable effect on the system.
  collection_jitter = "0s"

  ## Default flushing interval for all outputs. Maximum flush_interval will be
  ## flush_interval + flush_jitter
  flush_interval = "10s"
  ## Jitter the flush interval by a random amount. This is primarily to avoid
  ## large write spikes for users running a large number of telegraf instances.
  ## ie, a jitter of 5s and interval 10s means flushes will happen every 10-15s
  flush_jitter = "0s"

  ## By default or when set to "0s", precision will be set to the same
  ## timestamp order as the collection interval, with the maximum being 1s.
  ##   ie, when interval = "10s", precision will be "1s"
  ##       when interval = "250ms", precision will be "1ms"
  ## Precision will NOT be used for service inputs. It is up to each individual
  ## service input to set the timestamp at the appropriate precision.
  ## Valid time units are "ns", "us" (or "µs"), "ms", "s".
  precision = "s"

  ## Log at debug level.
  # debug = false
  ## Log only error level messages.
  # quiet = false

  ## Log target controls the destination for logs and can be one of "file",
  ## "stderr" or, on Windows, "eventlog".  When set to "file", the output file
  ## is determined by the "logfile" setting.
  # logtarget = "file"

  ## Name of the file to be logged to when using the "file" logtarget.  If set to
  ## the empty string then logs are written to stderr.
  # logfile = ""

  ## The logfile will be rotated after the time interval specified.  When set
  ## to 0 no time based rotation is performed.  Logs are rotated only when
  ## written to, if there is no log activity rotation may be delayed.
  # logfile_rotation_interval = "0d"

  ## The logfile will be rotated when it becomes larger than the specified
  ## size.  When set to 0 no size based rotation is performed.
  # logfile_rotation_max_size = "0MB"

  ## Maximum number of rotated archives to keep, any older logs are deleted.
  ## If set to -1, no archives are removed.
  # logfile_rotation_max_archives = 5

  ## Pick a timezone to use when logging or type 'local' for local time.
  ## Example: America/Chicago
  # log_with_timezone = ""

  ## Override default hostname, if empty use os.Hostname()
  hostname = ""
  ## If set to true, do no set the "host" tag in the telegraf agent.
  omit_hostname = false
[[outputs.influxdb_v2]]
  ## The URLs of the InfluxDB cluster nodes.
  ##
  ## Multiple URLs can be specified for a single cluster, only ONE of the
  ## urls will be written to each interval.
  ##   ex: urls = ["https://us-west-2-1.aws.cloud2.influxdata.com"]
  urls = ["http://172.19.0.3:8086"]

  ## Token for authentication.
  token = "XXXXXX"

  ## Organization is the name of the organization you wish to write to; must exist.
  organization = "test"

  ## Destination bucket to write into.
  bucket = "test"

[[outputs.file]]
  files = ["stdout", "/tmp/metrics.out"]


 [[inputs.mqtt_consumer]]
  servers = ["tcp://172.19.0.2:1883"]
  topics = [
    "bedroom/#"
  ]


  ## The value of this tag will be used to determine the bucket.  If this
  ## tag is not set the 'bucket' option is used as the default.
  # bucket_tag = ""

  ## If true, the bucket tag will not be added to the metric.
  # exclude_bucket_tag = false

  ## Timeout for HTTP messages.
  # timeout = "5s"

  ## Additional HTTP headers
  # http_headers = {"X-Special-Header" = "Special-Value"}

  ## HTTP Proxy override, if unset values the standard proxy environment
  ## variables are consulted to determine which proxy, if any, should be used.
  # http_proxy = "http://corporate.proxy:3128"

  ## HTTP User-Agent
  # user_agent = "telegraf"

  ## Content-Encoding for write request body, can be set to "gzip" to
  ## compress body or "identity" to apply no encoding.
  # content_encoding = "gzip"

  ## Enable or disable uint support for writing uints influxdb 2.0.
  # influx_uint_support = false

  ## Optional TLS Config for use on HTTP connections.
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

Here is some visual support to my problem

Looks like everything is fine with telegraf. Telegraf is able to read the data from the broker.
I got the same error metric parse error when I am trying to read dummy JSON data then I tried data in proper format (CSV data) and Telegraf was able to read them and store them in InfluxDB.
I was using the AWS ActiveMQ broker.
So I will suggest please check the data format and put configuration according to it.

1 Like

The data configuration is good, the problem is that Telegraf is reading the data from client “127.0.0.1” (green one) and not from client “172.19.0.1” (red one) and as you can see, the data is sent in the same configuration, but I am trying right now with more recent versions of the docker images I was using hoping it will change something

Problem solved by putting the mqtt broker on localhost and it works fine now, just add host.docker.internal in the telegraf conf file