1. Documentation
  2. Getting Up and Running
  3. Installing Blackfire

Installing Blackfire

Installing Blackfire

Installing and updating Blackfire should be a quick process. This document will guide you through the steps.

For a better experience, you should or .

Tell us what you want to do:

I want to Blackfire
on
which uses
for the language.

To start using Blackfire, we are going to install the following:

  • A language extension;
  • An agent to communicate with Blackfire's servers;
  • A profiling client (a browser extension or a CLI tool).

If you need to install the Blackfire stack manually because every other installation methods failed, please contact us and mention your platform, language type, and language version.

In the meantime, use the following steps for manual installation.

You are strongly advised to use the other installation methods available if possible as they give you seamless upgrade methods.

  1. Download the best agent binary for your platform:
  2. Move the downloaded blackfire-agent file to a directory in your path (e.g. /usr/local/bin) and make the file executable.

  1. This command asks for some Blackfire server credentials, log in or sign up now to get them:

    or

    Learn more about the agent configuration file.

  2. You can manually launch the agent each time you want to profile a page or a script by using blackfire-agent, but it is better to register a service in order to have it launched automatically and avoid any troubles.

    Please refer to your OS documentation to determine how to register a service (eg. using upstart, init.d, systemd or launchtl.)

  3. If something goes wrong, check out the log file generated by default in /var/log/blackfire/agent.log. Change the log file or the log level in the agent configuration file.
  1. Download the best probe library for your platform:
  2. Determine your PHP extensions directory: 
    php -i | grep 'extension_dir'
  3. Move the downloaded blackfire-*.so (blackfire-*.dll for Windows) file to this directory.
  4. Create the probe configuration file.

    5. On Linux systems, check that the /var/run/blackfire/ directory exists and is accessible by both the Agent and the Probe.
    For macOS users, check that the /usr/local/var/run/ directory exists and is accessible by both the Agent and the Probe.

  5. Restart your web server or PHP-FPM and check that there are no errors in the logs. To debug problems, you can change the log level and the log file in the probe configuration.

Known incompatibilities

PHP will likely crash when Blackfire is used when one of the following extensions is also enabled: XHProf, Pinba, and Suhosin.

If XDebug is installed, the PHP engine may not behave as expected; consider disabling it when profiling.

If pcov extension is installed, Blackfire will not behave as expected; consider disabling it when profiling.

To profile applications, you need to install a profiling client:

  • Profile from a browser via our browser extensions (Web applications only).

  • Profile from the command line via the blackfire tool (Web applications, APIs, command line tools, daemons, and more).

    1. Download the best client binary for your platform :
    2. Move the downloaded blackfire file to a directory in your path (e.g. /usr/local/bin) and make the file executable.
    3. Configure it with your personal credentials:
      blackfire config --client-id=CLIENT_ID --client-token=CLIENT_TOKEN

Start profiling via: