Upgrading Grafana from 8.0.4 to 9.0.5 on Windows fails to Start: "Grafana exited with return code 1"

Grafana Installation
1

After attempting to upgrade a working version of Grafana (8.0.4.0) to version 9.0.5.0, the Grafana service does not start.

  • What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?
    9.0.5.0 Windows

  • What are you trying to achieve?
    Upgrade Grafana / Start Grafana post upgrade

  • How are you trying to achieve it?
    Downlaoded the Windows 9.0.5.0 installer and ran it.

  • What happened?
    Installer finished, restarted the Host, Grafana fails to start.

  • What did you expect to happen?
    Grafana starts post upgrade.

  • Can you copy/paste the configuration(s) that you are having problems with?

  • Did you receive any errors in the Grafana UI or in related logs? If so, please tell us exactly what they were.

Grafana exited with return code 1

grafana-server.exe
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] Starting Grafana e[32mloggere[0m=settings e[32mversione[0m=9.0.5 e[32mcommite[0m=1b595e434a e[32mbranche[0m=HEAD e[32mcompilede[0m=2022-07-26T09:35:28Z
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] Config loaded from e[32mloggere[0m=settings e[32mfilee[0m=“C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\grafana/conf/defaults.ini”
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] Path Home e[32mloggere[0m=settings e[32mpathe[0m=“C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\grafana”
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] Path Data e[32mloggere[0m=settings e[32mpathe[0m=“C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\grafana\data”
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] Path Logs e[32mloggere[0m=settings e[32mpathe[0m=“C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\grafana\data\log”
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] Path Plugins e[32mloggere[0m=settings e[32mpathe[0m=“C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\grafana\data\plugins”
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] Path Provisioning e[32mloggere[0m=settings e[32mpathe[0m=“C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\grafana\conf\provisioning”
e[32mINFO e[0m[07-27|20:50:57] App mode production e[32mloggere[0m=settings
Failed to start grafana. error: section “tracing.opentelemetry.jaeger” does not exist
section “tracing.opentelemetry.jaeger” does not exist

  • Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?
2

Looks like the defaults.ini was not upgraded by the installer to include the [tracing.opentelemetry.jaeger] and [tracing.opentelemetry.otlp] sections.

This may be due to the [smtp] section of the defaults.ini having been previously edited to send Alerts.

After copying the [tracing.opentelemetry.jaeger] and [tracing.opentelemetry.otlp] sections from the sample.ini into the defaults.ini; commenting out the deprecated [tracing.jaeger] settings and uncommenting the [tracing.opentelemetry.jaeger] settings, the Grafana instance is now up and running on 9.0.5.0