Prometheus Ping Exporter

Yet another ping exporter.

Features:

• Uses Prometheus multi-target export pattern
• IPv4 and IPv6
• UDP and ICMP

This ping exporter is simple and fills a gap in the ping exporter market just by supporting the multi-target export pattern. No additional prober configuration is needed, as many other ping exporters require. A scrape job will take care of all configuration.

• Prometheus Ping Exporter
  • Parameters
  • Metrics
    • /probe
    • /metrics
  • Example Scrape Job
  • Installation
    • Debian/RPM package
    • Docker
    • Binary
    • Source
  • Other Ping Exporters
  • Releasing
  • Contributors

Parameters

Parameter Name	Description	Default	Acceptable Values
target	What to ping	none	Any hostname or IPv4/v6 address
timeout	How long the entire ping job should run before returning	10s	Any time.Duration value
interval	How long to wait between pings	1s	Any time.Duration value
count	How many pings to send	5	Any integer value
size	The size of the packet	56	Any integer value between 24 and 65507
TTL	TTL of the packet	64	Any time.Duration value
protocol, prot	IPv4 or IPv6	1s	v6, 6, ip6 (all other values considered to be IPv4)
packet	UDP or ICMP (ICMP requires root in most cases)	icmp	icmp (all other values considered to be udp)

Metrics

/probe

Metric Name	Type	Description
ping_duration_seconds	gauge	Returns how long the probe took to complete in seconds
ping_loss_ratio	gauge	Packet loss from 0 to 100
ping_rtt_avg_seconds	gauge	Mean round trip time
ping_rtt_max_seconds	gauge	Worst round trip time
ping_rtt_min_seconds	gauge	Best round trip time
ping_rtt_std_deviation	gauge	Standard deviation
ping_success	gauge	Returns whether the ping succeeded (if any packet returns this is successful)
ping_timeout	gauge	Returns whether the ping failed by timeout

/metrics

Standard Prometheus webserver metrics, plus ping_exporter_version_info.

Example Scrape Job

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'ping_exporter_metrics'
    scrape_interval: 15s
    scrape_timeout: 15s
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['0.0.0.0:9141']

  - job_name: 'prober'
    metrics_path: '/probe'
    scrape_interval: 15s
    scrape_timeout: 15s
    params:
      protocol: ['4']
      count: ['5']
      interval: ['1s']
    honor_labels: True
    static_configs:
    - targets:
      - google.com
      - linode.com
    relabel_configs:
    # Set the exporter's target
    - source_labels: [__address__]
      target_label: __param_target
    # Set address label to instance
    - source_labels: [__address__]
      target_label: instance
    # Actually talk to the blackbox exporter
    - target_label: __address__
      replacement: 0.0.0.0:9141
    # If we set a custom instance label, write it to the
    # expected instance label
    - source_labels: [__instance]
      target_label: instance
      regex: '(.+)'
      replacement: '${1}'

Installation

Debian/RPM package

Substitute {{ version }} for your desired release.

wget https://github.com/linode-obs/ping_exporter/releases/download/v{{ version }}/prometheus-ping-exporter_{{ version }}_linux_amd64.{deb,rpm}
{dpkg,rpm} -i prometheus-ping-exporter_{{ version }}_linux_amd64.{deb,rpm}

Docker

sudo docker run \
--privileged \
ghcr.io/linode-obs/ping_exporter

Binary

wget https://github.com/linode-obs/ping_exporter/releases/download/v{{ version }}/ping_exporter_{{ version }}_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
tar xvf ping_exporter_{{ version }}_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
./ping_exporter/prometheus-ping-exporter

Source

wget https://github.com/linode-obs/ping_exporter/archive/refs/tags/v{{ version }}.tar.gz
tar xvf ping_exporter-{{ version }}.tar.gz
cd ./ping_exporter-{{ version }}
go build ping_exporter.go
./ping_exporter.go

Other Ping Exporters

There are many other good ping exporters, please give them a look too:

• ping_exporter by czerwonk
• mtr-exporter by mgumz
• smokeping_prober by SuperQ
• ping-exporter by knsd

Releasing

1. Merge commits to main.
2. Tag release git tag -a v1.0.X -m "message"
3. git push origin v1.0.X
4. goreleaser release

Contributors

Special thanks to stalloneclone for supplying the idea and initial code for the project!