# Install burrow with Homebrew, apt Kafka Consumer Lag Checking. Version 1.9.6 via Homebrew; verified 2026-05-11. ## Install ```sh sudo av install brew:burrow ``` Additional install commands: ### macOS - Homebrew (100%): ```sh brew install burrow ``` Evidence: local Homebrew formula metadata ### Linux - Debian apt (92%): ```sh sudo apt install burrow ``` Evidence: Debian stable package indexes: burrow from https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz ## Package facts - **Package key:** brew:burrow - **Package manager:** Homebrew - **Package manager page:** - **Version:** 1.9.6 - **Source summary:** Kafka Consumer Lag Checking - **Homepage:** - **Repository:** - **Upstream docs:** - **License:** Apache-2.0 - **Source archive:** - **Last updated:** 2026-05-11T15:04:06Z - **Generated:** 2026-07-09T07:20:21+00:00 ## Executables - burrow (cli) - burrow (alias) ## Build dependencies - go ## Install behavior - Post-install hook: not defined - Service: declared - Bottle: available on arm64_linux, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, arm64_tahoe, sonoma, x86_64_linux ## Freshness - Page generated: 2026-07-09 - Package-manager version: 1.9.6 - Package-manager updated: 2026-05-11 - Local data: ok - Upstream repository: https://github.com/linkedin/Burrow - Upstream latest detected: v1.9.6 (current) ## Project history and usage Burrow is LinkedIn's Kafka consumer-lag monitoring service. Its core contribution is evaluating consumer health over a sliding window of committed offsets instead of alerting on fixed lag thresholds, which reduces false positives for large Kafka estates. ### Project history LinkedIn announced Burrow on June 12, 2015 as an open-source project from its Data Infrastructure SRE team. The launch post explained that standard Kafka lag metrics were not enough for wildcard consumers, mirror makers, and large consumer groups because partition-level lag and fixed thresholds produced noisy or incomplete alerts. The initial open-source design monitored Kafka-committed offsets, exposed consumer state over HTTP, and reduced many per-partition signals into an OK, warning, or error status. The repository changelog records 0.1.0 as the initial release on October 7, 2015, 0.1.1 in May 2016 with Zookeeper and Storm offset checking, and later 1.x releases that tracked newer Kafka and Go ecosystems. LinkedIn revisited Burrow in May 2018 for Burrow 1.1, describing a rewrite that added tests, modularized components, improved topic-deletion handling, moved configuration toward Viper-supported formats such as TOML and JSON, and made the project easier to maintain and embed. ### Adoption history Burrow was adopted quickly by other companies after LinkedIn's release, according to LinkedIn's 2018 follow-up post. The input metadata records packages for Homebrew, Debian, and Ubuntu, and the GitHub project remains a common reference point for Kafka consumer-lag monitoring. ### How it is used Operators run Burrow with a configuration directory, often mounted at `/etc/burrow`, then query HTTP endpoints for Kafka cluster, consumer group, broker, and status information. Burrow can also notify via email or HTTP integrations, making it suitable for alert pipelines that want health states rather than raw lag counters. ### Why package nerds care Burrow is important to package nerds because it captures a very specific operational lesson from large Kafka deployments: good monitoring packages often encode domain-specific judgment, not just metrics collection. It also illustrates the Go-era pattern of distributing infrastructure daemons as relatively easy-to-package single binaries with TOML config. ### Timeline - 2015-06-12: LinkedIn announced Burrow as an open-source Kafka consumer monitoring project. - 2015-10-07: Burrow 0.1.0 initial release recorded in the changelog. - 2016-05-01: Burrow 0.1.1 added Zookeeper and Storm offset checking. - 2018-05-15: LinkedIn announced Burrow 1.1 and described the rewrite and modularization work. - 2022-2026: 1.x releases continued to update Go, dependencies, and Kafka compatibility. ### Related projects - Burrow is related to Apache Kafka, Kafka MirrorMaker, ZooKeeper, Storm, Sarama, Viper, Prometheus exporters, and Kafka management or monitoring tools such as Kafka Manager/CMAK and broker-level metrics systems. ### Sources - - - - - - source_facts.package-manager ## Security Notes formula declares a Homebrew service. - **Geiger risk:** orange / medium - formula declares a Homebrew service ## Configuration and credential file locations These source-backed paths show where this package keeps local settings or durable credentials. Automic Vault can use them as review targets for secret scanning, migration, and command approval. ## Configuration files - Unix: ./burrow.toml, /etc/burrow/burrow.toml ## Source Database Details - **Source Database:** Homebrew formula API - **Tap:** homebrew/core - **Full Name:** burrow - **Version Scheme:** 0 - **Revision:** 0 - **Head Version:** HEAD - **Bottle Stable Root URL:** - **Deprecated:** no - **Disabled:** no - **Keg Only:** no - **URL Keys:** head, stable ## Other Package-Manager Records - Debian apt - burrow - 1.2.1-4+b7: normalized package name match | Debian stable package indexes: burrow from https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz | Apache Kafka consumer lag checking | https://github.com/linkedin/Burrow - Ubuntu apt - burrow - 1.2.1-2ubuntu2: normalized package name match | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package indexes: burrow from https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/noble/universe/binary-amd64/Packages.gz | Apache Kafka consumer lag checking | https://github.com/linkedin/Burrow ## Related links - [Source-control packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/source-control-tools/) - Belongs to a source-control command family. - [Secret-risk packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/secret-risk-packages/) - Has protected-tool coverage, approval-gate, or non-low Geiger security signals. - [Terminal utility packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/terminal-utilities/) - Matched terminal and command-line workflow metadata. - [Text processing packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/text-processing-tools/) - Matched text, document, or structured-data processing metadata. - [go](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/go/) - Build dependency declared by Homebrew. - [conduit](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/conduit/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, go, streaming. - [ktea](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/ktea/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, kafka, streaming. - [maxwell](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/maxwell/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, kafka, streaming. - [topicctl](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/topicctl/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, kafka, streaming. - [yozefu](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/yozefu/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, kafka, streaming. - [apache-flink-cdc](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/apache-flink-cdc/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, streaming. - [kaf](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/kaf/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, go, kafka. - [kafka](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/kafka/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: cli, data, streaming. ## Combined YAML source View the package source record on GitHub. [combined/burrow.yml](https://github.com/automic-vault/db/blob/main/combined/burrow.yml) ## Sources - Nucleus package database - Geiger risk classifier - package-page enrichment - curated configuration and credential file locations - curated package history - package version freshness - av.db category and tag curation - package relationship graph - external package-manager database matches - cross-ecosystem install command graph