Can't see node_filesystem_size_bytes for a mountpoint about node_exporter HOT 10 CLOSED

@NightTsarina Well, it's seems to confuse users. Both here debian and over in #2875 gentoo users.
Also I'd argue, if there is a good case to change the defaults, let's change them here

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It doesn't make sense to exclude /mnt and /media. Those locations are still mounting real, valid, filesystems. The exporter has always had the goal to monitor all valid fliesystems. Temporary and removable filesystems still need monitoring.

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The Debian and Ubuntu packages of prometheus-node-exporter have a patch which adds /mnt to the list of default excluded mountpoints.

Check your --collector.filesystem.mount-points-exclude flag.

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WTF, Debian.

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@SuperQ Overriding the default was originally moved from a config file to a patch in https://salsa.debian.org/go-team/packages/prometheus-node-exporter/-/commit/e0cd3e5f325bd60d9c29625b66057801f053cc1f

/mnt and /media were added in https://salsa.debian.org/go-team/packages/prometheus-node-exporter/-/commit/affc87fdacb8c9e3a75c51f55b27134dcdaa3d2e

cf. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=908811

That bug also mentions this, which is no longer true:

it is not the simplest, but in the default file you have the
documentation on how to do it, along with the current default value:

The flag default documentation / comments were removed from /etc/default/prometheus-node-exporter (and all other exporters packaged by Debian) since they changed too frequently and were becoming too burdensome to keep updated.

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Thanks for quick advice @dswarbrick !

You are correct..

It turned out Ubuntu default configuration excludes /mnt/

#    Regexp of filesystem types to exclude for filesystem collector.
#  --collector.filesystem.mount-points-exclude="^/(dev|proc|run|sys|mnt|media|var/lib/docker/.+)($|/)"

So I had to edit /etc/default/prometheus-node-exporter and override the default with

ARGS="--collector.filesystem.mount-points-exclude=\"^/(dev|proc|run|sys|media|var/lib/docker/.+)($|/)\""

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@NightTsarina hrmm.. can you explain why this was moved to a patch?

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This was added in 2018, reflecting the standard usage on Debian systems. The FHS defines those directories as:

• /media: Mount point for removable media
• /mnt: Mount point for a temporarily mounted filesystem

So it makes sense to exclude them by default. The decision to patch instead of a default was just to provide a better experience for most Debian users. It does not seem like such a contentious decision to me? After all, it can always be changed as needed...

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Sorry, I forgot to get back to this issue...

@discordianfish:

@NightTsarina Well, it's seems to confuse users. Both here debian and over in #2875 gentoo users. Also I'd argue, if there is a good case to change the defaults, let's change them here

I'd love to upstream this, but are you guys willing to accept this change?
BTW, I'd point out that in both cases, the users were using /mnt for non-temporary filesystems, which is not the intended usage for that directory.

@SuperQ:

It doesn't make sense to exclude /mnt and /media. Those locations are still mounting real, valid, filesystems. The exporter has always had the goal to monitor all valid fliesystems. Temporary and removable filesystems still need monitoring.

I can see your point, but I also think of the case where I would not want the node exporter to be exporting metrics about a USB stick or a temporary network mount and polluting the server. Plus, I think at some point the node exporter got stuck when querying a broken/slow filesystem, but I might be mistaken.

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Stuck mountpoint handling (mostly for things like NFS) was added in v0.17.0.

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