4. Start Flume

There are two options for starting Flume.

Start Flume directly. On the Flume host:
```
/etc/rc.d/init.d/flume-agent start
```
Start Flume as a service. On the Flume host:
```
service flume-agent start
```

	Tip
	Hadoop administrators planning to run Flume as a service must assign the name `agent` as the service name for all relevant configuration settings in `flume-conf`.