# Disable system metrics on packetbeat

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/disable-system-metrics-on-packetbeat/373281>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** docker, packetbeat\
**Created:** [January 16, 2025, 2:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/disable-system-metrics-on-packetbeat/373281 "2025-01-16T14:29:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![fcecagno](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fcecagno/32/140705_2.png) [@fcecagno](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/fcecagno)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 2:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/disable-system-metrics-on-packetbeat/373281/1 "2025-01-16T14:29:57Z")

</div>

Hi, I'm running packetbeat and I'm not interested in the system metrics reported by it - I use a different method to monitoring the host. Because I didn't add the SYS\_PTRACE capability to the docker container, I keep receiving an error of not enough privileges:

```json
{
  "log.level": "error",
  "@timestamp": "2025-01-16T14:31:25.645Z",
  "log.logger": "metrics",
  "log.origin": {
    "function": "github.com/elastic/elastic-agent-system-metrics/report.SetupLinuxBSDFDMetrics.FDUsageReporter.func1",
    "file.name": "report/metrics_file_descriptors.go",
    "file.line": 40
  },
  "message": "Error while retrieving FD information: %vNot enough privileges to fetch information: non-fatal error fetching PID metrics for 7, metrics are valid, but partial: Not enough privileges to fetch information: /io unavailable; if running inside a container, use SYS_PTRACE: error fetching IO metrics: open /proc/7/io: permission denied",
  "service.name": "packetbeat",
  "ecs.version": "1.6.0"
}

```

Ideally I'd like to add a parameter to packetbeat.yml to disable system metrics, however I couldn't find it.  
Any advise on how to disable it would be highly appreciated.

I'm running [docker.elastic.co/beats/packetbeat-oss:8.17.0](http://docker.elastic.co/beats/packetbeat-oss:8.17.0)