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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" {
  target "example" {
    address = "EXAMPLE_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
configstring or secretblackbox_exporter configuration as inline string.no
probe_timeout_offsetdurationOffset in seconds to subtract from timeout when probing targets."0.5s"no

Either config_file or config must be specified. 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. The label of the block is required and will be used in the target’s job label.

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
addressstringThe address of the target to probe.yes
modulestringBlackbox module to use to probe.""no
labelsmap(string)Labels to add to the target.no

Labels specified in the labels argument will not override labels set by blackbox_exporter.

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 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.

Examples

Collect metrics using a blackbox exporter config file

This example uses a prometheus.scrape component to collect metrics from prometheus.exporter.blackbox. It adds an extra label, env="dev", to the metrics emitted by the grafana target. The example target does not have any added labels.

The config_file argument is used to define which blackbox_exporter modules to use. You can use the blackbox example config file.

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"
    labels = {
      "env" = "dev",
    }
  }
}

// Configure a prometheus.scrape component to collect Blackbox metrics.
prometheus.scrape "demo" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.blackbox.example.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.

Collect metrics using an embedded configuration

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"
    labels = {
      "env" = "dev",
    }
  }
}

// Configure a prometheus.scrape component to collect Blackbox metrics.
prometheus.scrape "demo" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.blackbox.example.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.