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Caution

Grafana Alloy is the new name for our distribution of the OTel collector. Grafana Agent has been deprecated and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) through October 31, 2025. Grafana Agent will reach an End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.

Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Open source

prometheus.exporter.blackbox

The prometheus.exporter.blackbox component embeds blackbox_exporter. blackbox_exporter lets you collect blackbox metrics (probes) and expose them as Prometheus metrics.

Usage

river
prometheus.exporter.blackbox "LABEL" {
  config_file = "PATH_BLACKBOX_CONFIG_FILE"
  
  target "TARGET_NAME" {
    address = "TARGET_ADDRESS" 
  }
  
  ...
}

Arguments

The following arguments can be used to configure the exporter’s behavior. Omitted fields take their default values.

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
config_filestringblackbox_exporter configuration file path.no
configstringblackbox_exporter configuration as inline string.no
probe_timeout_offsetdurationOffset in seconds to subtract from timeout when probing targets."0.5s"no

The config_file argument points to a YAML file defining which blackbox_exporter modules to use. The config argument must be a YAML document as string defining which blackbox_exporter modules to use. config is typically loaded by using the exports of another component. For example,

  • local.file.LABEL.content
  • remote.http.LABEL.content
  • remote.s3.LABEL.content

See blackbox_exporter for details on how to generate a config file.

Blocks

The following blocks are supported inside the definition of prometheus.exporter.blackbox to configure collector-specific options:

HierarchyNameDescriptionRequired
targettargetConfigures a blackbox target.yes

target block

The target block defines an individual blackbox target. The target block may be specified multiple times to define multiple targets.

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
namestringName of the target.yes
addressstringThe address of the target to probe.yes
modulestringBlackbox module to use to probe.""no

Exported fields

The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components.

NameTypeDescription
targetslist(map(string))The targets that can be used to collect exporter metrics.

For example, the targets can either be passed to a discovery.relabel component to rewrite the targets’ label sets, or to a prometheus.scrape component that collects the exposed metrics.

The exported targets will use the configured in-memory traffic address specified by the run command.

Component health

prometheus.exporter.blackbox is only reported as unhealthy if given an invalid configuration. In those cases, exported fields retain their last healthy values.

Debug information

prometheus.exporter.blackbox does not expose any component-specific debug information.

Debug metrics

prometheus.exporter.blackbox does not expose any component-specific debug metrics.

Example

This example uses a prometheus.scrape component to collect metrics from prometheus.exporter.blackbox:

river
prometheus.exporter.blackbox "example" { 
	config_file = "blackbox_modules.yml"
	
	target "example" {
		address = "http://example.com"
		module  = "http_2xx"
	}
	
	target "grafana" {
		address = "http://grafana.com"
		module  = "http_2xx"
	}	
}

// Configure a prometheus.scrape component to collect Blackbox metrics.
prometheus.scrape "demo" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.blackbox.example.targets
  forward_to = [ /* ... */ ]
}

This example is the same above with using an embedded configuration:

river
prometheus.exporter.blackbox "example" { 
	config = "{ modules: { http_2xx: { prober: http, timeout: 5s } } }"
	
	target "example" {
		address = "http://example.com"
		module  = "http_2xx"
	}
	
	target "grafana" {
		address = "http://grafana.com"
		module  = "http_2xx"
	}	
}

// Configure a prometheus.scrape component to collect Blackbox metrics.
prometheus.scrape "demo" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.blackbox.example.targets
  forward_to = [ /* ... */ ]
}