Companion to: https://computingforgeeks.com/install-qdrant-debian/

Tested on Debian 13.5 (Trixie) with kernel 6.12.74+deb13+1-cloud-amd64. Same steps apply to Debian 12 (Bookworm) since both share apt.

# Docker CE with journald log forwarding (recommended)
./install-docker.sh

# Native .deb + hand-written systemd unit
./install-native.sh

After either, verify:

curl -s http://localhost:6333/healthz       # healthz check passed
sudo journalctl CONTAINER_NAME=qdrant -n 5  # for Docker
sudo journalctl -u qdrant -n 5              # for native systemd

• install-docker.sh — Docker CE install, configures journald driver in /etc/docker/daemon.json before first run.
• install-native.sh — Downloads the .deb, creates the qdrant system user + storage + snapshots dirs + systemd unit. None of those are shipped by the package.
• docker-compose.yml — Production-ready Compose file with API key, memory limit, healthcheck, journald driver.
• qdrant.service — Standalone systemd unit, drop at /etc/systemd/system/qdrant.service.

1. The Qdrant .deb ships no systemd unit, no user, no snapshots directory. Skip any of those three and you get a panic on first start. install-native.sh provisions all three.
2. Docker's journald log driver is per-container at create time. Setting /etc/docker/daemon.json does not retroactively flip existing containers; they need a recreate to pick it up. install-docker.sh configures the driver before the first run.
3. The .deb default config uses absolute path /var/lib/qdrant/storage regardless of WorkingDirectory in the unit. If you reuse a directory created by a prior Docker run (root-owned files), the systemd qdrant user will hit PermissionDenied on the WAL.

This is the bare install. For real workloads add:

• API key + TLS reverse proxy (see ../tls-nginx/ once the security article ships)
• Snapshots to S3 (see ../backup/)
• Prometheus monitoring (see ../monitoring/)