Blackbox

The blackbox exporter allows you to check the status of endpoints over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, TCP, ICMP and gRPC.

This is mostly used as a ‘ping’ test to see if the device is on the network, or a web scrape to see if the web server is responding.

This is most useful when you can’t or don’t want to install the node exporter on the target.

sudo apt install  -t testing prometheus-blackbox-exporter
 - job_name: 'phones'
    metrics_path: /probe
    params:
      module: [icmp]
    static_configs:
      - targets:
        - some.end.point
        - some.other.point
    relabel_configs:
      - source_labels: [__address__]
        target_label: __param_target
      - source_labels: [__param_target]
        target_label: instance
      - target_label: __address__
        replacement: 127.0.0.1:9115         

Last modified April 1, 2026: changed name (b6cb643)