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.
prometheus.exporter.unix
The prometheus.exporter.unix component embeds
node_exporter which exposes 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.
Multiple prometheus.exporter.unix components can be specified by giving them different labels.
Usage
prometheus.exporter.unix "LABEL" {
}Arguments
The following arguments can be used to configure the exporter’s behavior. All arguments are optional. Omitted fields take their default values.
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
set_collectors | list(string) | Overrides the default set of enabled collectors with the collectors listed. | no | |
enable_collectors | list(string) | Collectors to mark as enabled. | no | |
disable_collectors | list(string) | Collectors to mark as disabled. | no | |
include_exporter_metrics | boolean | Whether metrics about the exporter itself should be reported. | false | no |
procfs_path | string | The procfs mountpoint. | /proc | no |
sysfs_path | string | The sysfs mountpoint. | /sys | no |
rootfs_path | string | Specify a prefix for accessing the host filesystem. | / | no |
udev_data_path | string | The udev data path. | /run/udev/data | no |
set_collectors defines a hand-picked list of enabled-by-default
collectors. If set, anything not provided in that list is disabled by
default. See 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. In case
of 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:
| Hierarchy | Name | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| bcache | bcache | Configures the bcache collector. | no |
| cpu | cpu | Configures the cpu collector. | no |
| disk | disk | Configures the diskstats collector. | no |
| ethtool | ethtool | Configures the ethtool collector. | no |
| filesystem | filesystem | Configures the filesystem collector. | no |
| ipvs | ipvs | Configures the ipvs collector. | no |
| ntp | ntp | Configures the ntp collector. | no |
| netclass | netclass | Configures the netclass collector. | no |
| netdev | netdev | Configures the netdev collector. | no |
| netstat | netstat | Configures the netstat collector. | no |
| perf | perf | Configures the perf collector. | no |
| powersupply | powersupply | Configures the powersupply collector. | no |
| runit | runit | Configures the runit collector. | no |
| supervisord | supervisord | Configures the supervisord collector. | no |
| sysctl | sysctl | Configures the sysctl collector. | no |
| systemd | systemd | Configures the systemd collector. | no |
| tapestats | tapestats | Configures the tapestats collector. | no |
| textfile | textfile | Configures the textfile collector. | no |
| vmstat | vmstat | Configures the vmstat collector. | no |
bcache block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
priority_stats | boolean | Enable exposing of expensive bcache priority stats. | false | no |
cpu block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
guest | boolean | Enable the node_cpu_guest_seconds_total metric. | true | no |
info | boolean | Enable the cpu_info metric for the cpu collector. | true | no |
bugs_include | string | Regexp of bugs field in cpu info to filter. | no | |
flags_include | string | Regexp of flags field in cpu info to filter. | no |
disk block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
device_exclude | string | Regexp of devices to exclude for diskstats. | "^(ram|loop|fd|(h|s|v|xv)d[a-z]|nvme\\d+n\\d+p)\\d+$" | no |
device_include | string | Regexp of devices to include for diskstats. If set, device_exclude is ignored. | no |
ethtool block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
device_exclude | string | Regexp of ethtool devices to exclude (mutually exclusive with device_include). | no | |
device_include | string | Regexp of ethtool devices to include (mutually exclusive with device_exclude). | no | |
metrics_include | string | Regexp of ethtool stats to include. | .* | no |
filesystem block
The default values can vary by the operating system the agent runs on - refer to the integration source for up-to-date values on each OS.
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
fs_types_exclude | string | Regexp of filesystem types to ignore for filesystem collector. | (see below ) | no |
mount_points_exclude | string | Regexp of mount points to ignore for filesystem collector. | "^/(dev|proc|sys|var/lib/docker/.+)($|/)" | no |
mount_timeout | duration | How long to wait for a mount to respond before marking it as stale. | "5s" | no |
fs_types_exclude defaults to the following regular expression string:
^(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)$ipvs block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
backend_labels | list(string) | Array of IPVS backend stats labels. | [local_address, local_port, remote_address, remote_port, proto, local_mark] | no |
ntp block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
server | string | NTP server to use for the collector. | "127.0.0.1" | no |
server_is_local | boolean | Certifies that the server address is not a public ntp server. | false | no |
ip_ttl | int | TTL to use while sending NTP query. | 1 | no |
local_offset_tolerance | duration | Offset between local clock and local ntpd time to tolerate. | "1ms" | no |
max_distance | duration | Max accumulated distance to the root. | "3466080us" | no |
protocol_version | int | NTP protocol version. | 4 | no |
netclass block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ignore_invalid_speed_device | boolean | Ignore net devices with invalid speed values. | false | no |
ignored_devices | string | Regexp of net devices to ignore for netclass collector. | "^$" | no |
netdev block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
address_info | boolean | Enable collecting address-info for every device. | false | no |
device_exclude | string | Regexp of net devices to exclude (mutually exclusive with device_include). | no | |
device_include | string | Regexp of net devices to include (mutually exclusive with device_exclude). | no |
netstat block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
fields | string | Regexp of fields to return for netstat collector. | (see below) | no |
fields defaults to the following regular expression string:
"^(.*_(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))$"perf block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
cpus | string | List of CPUs from which perf metrics should be collected. | no | |
tracepoint | list(string) | Array of perf tracepoints that should be collected. | no | |
disable_hardware_profilers | boolean | Disable perf hardware profilers. | false | no |
hardware_profilers | list(string) | Perf hardware profilers that should be collected. | no | |
disable_software_profilers | boolean | Disable perf software profilers. | false | no |
software_profilers | list(string) | Perf software profilers that should be collected. | no | |
disable_cache_profilers | boolean | Disable perf cache profilers. | false | no |
cache_profilers | list(string) | Perf cache profilers that should be collected. | no |
powersupply block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ignored_supplies | string | Regexp of power supplies to ignore for the powersupplyclass collector. | "^$" | no |
runit block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
service_dir | string | Path to runit service directory. | "/etc/service" | no |
supervisord block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
url | string | XML RPC endpoint for the supervisord collector. | "http://localhost:9001/RPC2" | no |
Setting SUPERVISORD_URL in the environment overrides the default value.
An explicit value in the block takes precedence over the environment variable.
sysctl block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
include | list(string) | Numeric sysctl values to expose. | [] | no |
include_info | list(string) | String sysctl values to expose. | [] | no |
systemd block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
enable_restarts | boolean | Enables service unit metric service_restart_total | false | no |
start_time | boolean | Enables service unit metric unit_start_time_seconds | false | no |
task_metrics | boolean | Enables service unit task metrics unit_tasks_current and unit_tasks_max. | false | no |
unit_exclude | string | Regexp of systemd units to exclude. Units must both match include and not match exclude to be collected. | ".+\\.(automount|device|mount|scope|slice)" | no |
unit_include | string | Regexp of systemd units to include. Units must both match include and not match exclude to be collected. | ".+" | no |
tapestats block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ignored_devices | string | Regexp of tapestats devices to ignore. | "^$" | no |
textfile block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
directory | string | Directory to read *.prom files from for the textfile collector. | no |
vmstat block
| name | type | description | default | required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
fields | string | Regexp of fields to return for the vmstat collector. | "^(oom_kill|pgpg|pswp|pg.*fault).*" | no |
Exported fields
The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components.
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
targets | list(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 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 is not supported by the host OS where Flow 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.
| Name | Description | OS | Enabled by default |
|---|---|---|---|
arp | Exposes ARP statistics from /proc/net/arp. | Linux | yes |
bcache | Exposes bcache statistics from /sys/fs/bcache. | Linux | yes |
bonding | Exposes the number of configured and active slaves of Linux bonding interfaces. | Linux | yes |
boottime | Exposes system boot time derived from the kern.boottime sysctl. | Darwin, Dragonfly, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris | yes |
btrfs | Exposes statistics on btrfs. | Linux | yes |
buddyinfo | Exposes statistics of memory fragments as reported by /proc/buddyinfo. | Linux | no |
conntrack | Shows conntrack statistics (does nothing if no /proc/sys/net/netfilter/ present). | Linux | yes |
cpu | Exposes CPU statistics. | Darwin, Dragonfly, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, NetBSD | yes |
cpufreq | Exposes CPU frequency statistics. | Linux, Solaris | yes |
devstat | Exposes device statistics. | Dragonfly, FreeBSD | no |
diskstats | Exposes disk I/O statistics. | Darwin, Linux, OpenBSD | yes |
dmi | Exposes DMI information. | Linux | yes |
drbd | Exposes Distributed Replicated Block Device statistics (to version 8.4). | Linux | no |
drm | Exposes GPU card info from /sys/class/drm/card?/device. | Linux | no |
edac | Exposes error detection and correction statistics. | Linux | yes |
entropy | Exposes available entropy. | Linux | yes |
ethtool | Exposes ethtool stats. | Linux | no |
exec | Exposes execution statistics. | Dragonfly, FreeBSD | yes |
fibrechannel | Exposes FibreChannel statistics. | Linux | yes |
filefd | Exposes file descriptor statistics from /proc/sys/fs/file-nr. | Linux | yes |
filesystem | Exposes filesystem statistics, such as disk space used. | Darwin, Dragonfly, FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD | yes |
hwmon | Exposes hardware monitoring and sensor data from /sys/class/hwmon. | Linux | yes |
infiniband | Exposes network statistics specific to InfiniBand and Intel OmniPath configurations. | Linux | yes |
interrupts | Exposes detailed interrupts statistics. | Linux, OpenBSD | no |
ipvs | Exposes IPVS status from /proc/net/ip_vs and stats from /proc/net/ip_vs_stats. | Linux | yes |
ksmd | Exposes kernel and system statistics from /sys/kernel/mm/ksm. | Linux | no |
lnstat | Exposes Linux network cache stats. | Linux | no |
loadavg | Exposes load average. | Darwin, Dragonfly, FreeBSD, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris | yes |
logind | Exposes session counts from logind. | Linux | no |
mdadm | Exposes statistics about devices in /proc/mdstat (does nothing if no /proc/mdstat present). | Linux | yes |
meminfo | Exposes memory statistics. | Darwin, Dragonfly, FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD | yes |
meminfo_numa | Exposes memory statistics from /proc/meminfo_numa. | Linux | no |
mountstats | Exposes filesystem statistics from /proc/self/mountstats. Exposes detailed NFS client statistics. | Linux | no |
netclass | Exposes network interface info from /sys/class/net. | Linux | yes |
netdev | Exposes network interface statistics such as bytes transferred. | Darwin, Dragonfly, FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD | yes |
netisr | Exposes netisr statistics. | FreeBSD | yes |
netstat | Exposes network statistics from /proc/net/netstat. This is the same information as netstat -s. | Linux | yes |
network_route | Exposes network route statistics. | Linux | no |
nfs | Exposes NFS client statistics from /proc/net/rpc/nfs. This is the same information as nfsstat -c. | Linux | yes |
nfsd | Exposes NFS kernel server statistics from /proc/net/rpc/nfsd. This is the same information as nfsstat -s. | Linux | yes |
ntp | Exposes local NTP daemon health to check time. | any | no |
nvme | Exposes NVMe statistics. | Linux | yes |
os | Exposes os-release information. | Linux | yes |
perf | Exposes perf based metrics (Warning: Metrics are dependent on kernel configuration and settings). | Linux | no |
powersupplyclass | Collects information on power supplies. | any | yes |
pressure | Exposes pressure stall statistics from /proc/pressure/. | Linux (kernel 4.20+ and/or CONFIG_PSI) | yes |
processes | Exposes aggregate process statistics from /proc. | Linux | no |
qdisc | Exposes queuing discipline statistics. | Linux | no |
rapl | Exposes various statistics from /sys/class/powercap. | Linux | yes |
runit | Exposes service status from runit. | any | no |
schedstat | Exposes task scheduler statistics from /proc/schedstat. | Linux | yes |
sockstat | Exposes various statistics from /proc/net/sockstat. | Linux | yes |
softirqs | Exposes detailed softirq statistics from /proc/softirqs. | Linux | no |
softnet | Exposes statistics from /proc/net/softnet_stat. | Linux | yes |
stat | Exposes various statistics from /proc/stat. This includes boot time, forks and interrupts. | Linux | yes |
supervisord | Exposes service status from supervisord. | any | no |
sysctl | Expose sysctl values from /proc/sys. | Linux | no |
systemd | Exposes service and system status from systemd. | Linux | no |
tapestats | Exposes tape device stats. | Linux | yes |
tcpstat | Exposes TCP connection status information from /proc/net/tcp and /proc/net/tcp6. (Warning: The current version has potential performance issues in high load situations.) | Linux | no |
textfile | Collects metrics from files in a directory matching the filename pattern *.prom. The files must be using the text format defined here: https://prometheus.io/docs/instrumenting/exposition_formats/. | any | yes |
thermal | Exposes thermal statistics. | Darwin | yes |
thermal_zone | Exposes thermal zone & cooling device statistics from /sys/class/thermal. | Linux | yes |
time | Exposes the current system time. | any | yes |
timex | Exposes selected adjtimex(2) system call stats. | Linux | yes |
udp_queues | Exposes UDP total lengths of the rx_queue and tx_queue from /proc/net/udp and /proc/net/udp6. | Linux | yes |
uname | Exposes system information as provided by the uname system call. | Darwin, FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD | yes |
vmstat | Exposes statistics from /proc/vmstat. | Linux | yes |
wifi | Exposes WiFi device and station statistics. | Linux | no |
xfs | Exposes XFS runtime statistics. | Linux (kernel 4.4+) | yes |
zfs | Exposes ZFS performance statistics. | Linux, Solaris | yes |
zoneinfo | Exposes zone stats. | Linux | no |
Running on Docker/Kubernetes
When running Flow 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 the
Agent 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:
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
Note
Connecting some components may not be sensible or components may require further configuration to make the connection work correctly. Refer to the linked documentation for more details.



