Facebook Scribe Installation Notes

Posted on 2015-10-20 Edited on 2026-05-22 In 自言自语

Scribe is Facebook’s log collection system. The moment you see “FB”, you immediately think it’s a high-end, top-tier product. However, the entire installation journey was incredibly bumpy! So, I’m writing down these setup notes to save my future self from falling into the same traps again.

1. System Dependencies

a. GCC and GCC-C++ (version 4.1.2 tested and passed)
b. Ruby (version 1.8.5 tested and passed)
c. Python (version 2.4.3 tested and passed, including both python and python-devel)
d. libevent (version 1.4 tested and passed, including both libevent and libevent-devel)
e. Others: openssl-devel, bison, autoconf (version > 2.65), bzip2-devel, automake

You can resolve all of these dependencies using yum:

1	sudo yum install automake libtool flex bison pkgconfig gcc-c++ boost-devel libevent-devel zlib-devel python-devel ruby-devel openssl-devel

[!IMPORTANT]
Please do not rush into installing the later components before verifying these! Make sure these dependencies are properly confirmed first, otherwise you might end up having to reinstall, which makes things ten times more frustrating.

2. Pre-requisite Components

Boost: 1.5.4
Thrift: 0.9.0
fb303: Already included inside the Thrift package

2.1 Installing Boost

This is a C++ standard library, required for compiling C++ code later on.

wget http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/project/boost/boost/1.45.0/boost_1_45_0.tar.bz2
tar jxvf boost_1_45_0.tar.bz2
cd boost_1_45_0
./bootstrap.sh
./b2 install

Note: This compiling step is incredibly slow. Be prepared to wait.

By default, it will be installed under /usr/local/include/boost/.

2.2 Installing Thrift & fb303

Thrift is another framework released by Facebook, designed for seamless development and RPC between programs written in different languages.

Seeing this, it becomes clear that Facebook’s blueprint is massive. This explains why Scribe isn’t just a simple, standalone package. Once you’ve set up these frameworks and compiled libraries, you essentially have Facebook’s foundational development environment ready. Any subsequent FB tool you install will be a breeze, starting from a warm baseline. Plus, it naturally encourages other developers to adopt the same framework… talk about leading by example!

A. Thrift Installation

wget http://mirror.bjtu.edu.cn/apache/thrift/0.7.0/thrift-0.7.0.tar.gz
tar zxvf thrift-0.7.0.tar.gz
cd thrift-0.7.0
./configure CPPFLAGS="-DHAVE_INTTYPES_H -DHAVE_NETINET_IN_H"
make
make install

Note: The CPPFLAGS argument is mandatory when running configure. Otherwise, the compilation will fail during make with errors like ‘uint_32 undefined’. Additionally, if the configuration step cannot find the Boost library, you must specify its location using the --with-boost parameter. After installing Thrift, it’s a good idea to run a quick test to verify it works.

B. fb303 Installation

cd contrib/fb303/
./bootstrap.sh
./configure
make
make install

C. Run a Thrift Example (Optional—good for verifying components are working properly)

cd tutorial
thrift -r --gen cpp tutorial.thrift
cd cpp
make
./CppServer  # Starts the server
./CppClient  # Starts the client

3. Installing Scribe

Download the package from https://github.com/facebookarchive/scribe, extract it, and navigate into the directory:

./bootstrap.sh
./configure   # If this errors, please check the special parameters below!
make
make install

Troubleshooting Common Compilation Errors (Chances are high you will run into these):

Typical Error 1:
During configure, you encounter:

1
2
3

checking whether the Boost::System library is available… yes
checking whether the Boost::Filesystem library is available… yes
configure: error: Could not link against !

Fix: You need to add the following parameters when running configure:

1	--with-boost-system=lboost_system --with-boost-filesystem=lboost_filesystem

Typical Error 2:
During make, you encounter:

1 2	undefined reference to 'boost::system::generic_category()' undefined reference to 'boost::system::system_category()'

Fix: Once you have confirmed that the boost::system library exists and its path is correct, inspect the GCC link command (according to the make output):

g++ -Wall -O3 -L/usr/local/lib/ -lboost_system -lboost_filesystem -o scribed store.o store_queue.o conf.o file.o conn_pool.o scribe_server.o network_dynamic_config.o dynamic_bucket_updater.o env_default.o -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/local/lib -lfb303 -lthrift -lthriftnb -levent -lpthread libscribe.a libdynamicbucketupdater.a

You need to move the -lboost_system -lboost_filesystem options to the very end of the command, and then manually execute the linking command inside the src directory to complete the compilation.

I ran into Error 1 myself. After trying out dozens of different ways, I finally got it resolved. The final successful configure parameters I used were:

./configure --config-cache --prefix=/usr/local --with-boost=/usr/local/lib --with-boost-system=boost_system --with-boost-filesystem=boost_filesystem CPPFLAGS="-DHAVE_INTTYPES_H -DHAVE_NETINET_IN_H -DBOOST_FILESYSTEM_VERSION=3"