Infra

Fixing a grafana instance on macOS

Date: 2026-02-08
Host: server (macOS Monterey; Homebrew prefix: /usr/local)
Grafana install: Homebrew (/usr/local/opt/grafana)
Grafana data: /usr/local/var/lib/grafana

Grafana (Homebrew on macOS Monterey) & Password Reset + Boot-Time Startup (No GUI Login)

Summary (what was fixed)

  1. Admin login/password wouldn’t work even after “reset” attempts.
  2. Grafana would run manually, but would not reliably run as a user service via brew services and you needed it to start at boot without any desktop login.
  3. fixed both by:
  • Resetting the password against the actual Brew paths + DB that the running server uses.
  • Replacing the GUI-bound LaunchAgent approach with a system LaunchDaemon at /Library/LaunchDaemons/... that runs at boot as your user.

Caveats

“Password reset succeeded” was misleading because I was hitting the wrong DB

Grafana can be pointed at different data directories. In this setup, the running Brew Grafana server uses:

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