Kibana

What is Kibana?

Kibana is the official visualization and dashboard UI for Elasticsearch. It lets you explore indices, build charts, and query data through a web interface instead of the raw REST API. Laradock builds it from the official image, version-matched to Elasticsearch.

Start Kibana

Laradock CLI

./laradock start kibana

Docker Compose

docker compose up -d kibana

kibana/compose.yml lists elasticsearch as a depends_on, so it starts automatically alongside Kibana, it has nothing to visualize without it.

Stop Kibana

Laradock CLI

./laradock stop kibana

Docker Compose

docker compose stop kibana

To delete the container:

Laradock CLI

./laradock remove kibana

Docker Compose

docker compose rm -sf kibana

Configuration

Laradock builds the image from kibana/Dockerfile using the shared ELK_VERSION variable in the root .env (the same version used for elasticsearch), plus this setting in kibana/defaults.env:

Variable	Default	What it does
KIBANA_HTTP_PORT	5601	Host-side port Kibana is published on (container port 5601).

Change the Kibana version

Kibana has no version variable of its own, it always builds against the shared ELK_VERSION in the root .env (Elastic requires matching major/minor versions across the stack):

ELK_VERSION=8.15.0

Then rebuild both, since a mismatch between them causes Kibana to refuse to start:

Laradock CLI

./laradock rebuild kibana elasticsearch

Docker Compose

docker compose build kibana elasticsearch

Connect

Open http://localhost:5601 in your browser. Kibana auto-detects the elasticsearch container over the internal backend network, no manual host configuration needed for the bundled setup.

There's no login screen. Laradock's elasticsearch/compose.yml sets xpack.security.enabled=false, so Kibana connects to Elasticsearch anonymously and drops you straight into the app, this is meant for local development, not a setup you'd expose publicly as-is.

Kibana has no data of its own

Kibana itself is stateless: it has no data volume in kibana/compose.yml. Everything you build in it, index patterns, saved searches, dashboards, visualizations, is stored by Elasticsearch itself, inside its own .kibana system index, on the elasticsearch volume. There's nothing to back up or wipe on the Kibana side specifically: to back up or reset your dashboards, back up or reset the underlying Elasticsearch data (see the Elasticsearch page). Removing or rebuilding the kibana container never touches your saved objects, only removing the elasticsearch container's data volume does.

Common issues

• Kibana shows "Kibana server is not ready yet". It waits on Elasticsearch to be reachable and healthy first; confirm elasticsearch is actually up with docker compose ps and check ./laradock logs elasticsearch.
• Version mismatch errors. Kibana and Elasticsearch both read ELK_VERSION from the root .env, so they build to the same version automatically. If you changed one manually, rebuild both: ./laradock rebuild kibana elasticsearch.
• Port already in use on your host. Change KIBANA_HTTP_PORT in .env and restart: ./laradock restart kibana.
• Dashboards/saved objects disappeared. They live in Elasticsearch, not Kibana, check that you didn't wipe the elasticsearch data volume or point at a different DATA_PATH_HOST.

---

Need a lighter-weight index browser instead? See Dejavu. Need the underlying engine? See Elasticsearch. New to Laradock? Start with Getting Started.