Documentation Grafana Cloud Instrument and send data Grafana Alloy Reference Components prometheus prometheus.exporter.unix

prometheus.exporter.unix

The prometheus.exporter.unix component uses node_exporter to expose a wide variety of hardware and OS metrics for *nix-based systems.

The node_exporter itself is comprised of various collectors, which can be enabled and disabled at will. For more information on collectors, refer to the collectors-list section.

You can specify multiple prometheus.exporter.unix components by giving them different labels.

Usage

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prometheus.exporter.unix "LABEL" {
}

Arguments

You can use the following arguments to configure the exporter. All arguments are optional. Omitted fields take their default values.

set_collectors defines a hand-picked list of enabled-by-default collectors. If set, anything not provided in that list is disabled by default. Refer to the Collectors list for the default set of enabled collectors for each supported operating system.

enable_collectors enables more collectors over the default set, or on top of the ones provided in set_collectors.

disable_collectors extends the default set of disabled collectors. If there are conflicts, it takes precedence over enable_collectors.

Blocks

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

bcache block

cpu block

disk block

ethtool block

filesystem block

The default values vary by the operating system Alloy runs on.

fs_types_exclude defaults to the following regular expression string:

linuxosxbsd

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linux Copy

^(autofs|binfmt_misc|bpf|cgroup2?|configfs|debugfs|devpts|devtmpfs|fusectl|hugetlbfs|iso9660|mqueue|nsfs|overlay|proc|procfs|pstore|rpc_pipefs|securityfs|selinuxfs|squashfs|sysfs|tracefs)$

osx Copy

^(autofs|devfs)$

bsd Copy

^devfs$

mount_points_exclude defaults to the following regular expression string:

linuxosxbsd

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linux Copy

^/(dev|proc|run/credentials/.+|sys|var/lib/docker/.+)($|/)

osx Copy

^/(dev)($|/)

bsd Copy

^/(dev)($|/)

hwmon block

ipvs block

ntp block

netclass block

netdev block

netstat block

fields defaults to the following regular expression string:

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"^(.*_(InErrors|InErrs)|Ip_Forwarding|Ip(6|Ext)_(InOctets|OutOctets)|Icmp6?_(InMsgs|OutMsgs)|TcpExt_(Listen.*|Syncookies.*|TCPSynRetrans|TCPTimeouts)|Tcp_(ActiveOpens|InSegs|OutSegs|OutRsts|PassiveOpens|RetransSegs|CurrEstab)|Udp6?_(InDatagrams|OutDatagrams|NoPorts|RcvbufErrors|SndbufErrors))$"

perf block

powersupply block

runit block

supervisord block

Setting SUPERVISORD_URL in the environment overrides the default value. An explicit value in the block takes precedence over the environment variable.

sysctl block

systemd block

tapestats block

textfile block

vmstat block

Exported fields

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

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 use the configured in-memory traffic address specified by the run command.

Component health

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

Debug information

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

Debug metrics

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

Collectors list

The following table lists the available collectors that node_exporter brings bundled in. Some collectors only work on specific operating systems. Enabling a collector that’s not supported by the host operating system where Alloy is running is a no-op.

Users can choose to enable a subset of collectors to limit the amount of metrics exposed by the prometheus.exporter.unix component, or disable collectors that are expensive to run.

Run on Docker/Kubernetes

When running Alloy in a Docker container, you need to bind mount the filesystem, procfs, and sysfs from the host machine, as well as set the corresponding arguments for the component to work.

You may also need to add capabilities such as SYS_TIME and make sure that Alloy is running with elevated privileges for some of the collectors to work properly.

Example

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

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prometheus.exporter.unix "demo" { }

// Configure a prometheus.scrape component to collect unix metrics.
prometheus.scrape "demo" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.unix.demo.targets
  forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.demo.receiver]
}

prometheus.remote_write "demo" {
  endpoint {
    url = PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL

    basic_auth {
      username = USERNAME
      password = PASSWORD
    }
  }
}

Replace the following:

• PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL: The URL of the Prometheus remote_write-compatible server to send metrics to.
• USERNAME: The username to use for authentication to the remote_write API.
• PASSWORD: The password to use for authentication to the remote_write API.

Compatible components

prometheus.exporter.unix has exports that can be consumed by the following components:

• Components that consume Targets