The contrib/debian/ directory contains basic rules to build a Debian package. It has been tested on Debian Jessie and Wheezy, but should work, possibly with minor changes, if you have other dpkg-based systems such as Ubuntu or Mint.

To build netdata for a Debian Jessie system, the debian directory has to be available in the root of the netdata source. The easiest way to do this is with a symlink:

~/netdata$ ln -s contrib/debian

Then build the debian package:

~/netdata$ dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -rfakeroot

This should give a package that can be installed in the parent directory, which you can install manually with dpkg.

~/netdata$ ls ../*.deb
../netdata_1.0.0_amd64.deb
~/netdata$ sudo dpkg -i ../netdata_1.0.0_amd64.deb

The included packaging is designed for modern Debian systems that are based on systemd. To build non-systemd packages (for example, for Debian wheezy), you will need to make a couple of minor updates first.

• edit contrib/debian/rules and adjust the dh rule near the top to remove systemd (see comments in that file).

• rename contrib/debian/control.wheezy to contrib/debian/control.

• change control.wheezy from contrib/Makefile* to control.

• uncomment EXTRA_OPTS="-P /var/run/netdata.pid" in contrib/debian/netdata.default

• edit contrib/debian/netdata.init and change PIDFILE to /var/run/netdata.pid

• remove dpkg-statoverride --update --add --force root netdata 0775 /var/lib/netdata/registry from contrib/debian/netdata.postinst.in. If you are going to handle the unique id file differently.

Then proceed as the main instructions above.

The recommended way to upgrade netdata packages built from this source is to remove the current package from your system, then install the new package. Upgrading on wheezy is known to not work cleanly; Jessie may behave as expected.