Windows_exporter: Question: textfile collector usage

[pete-leese]

Hi guys,

Quick question

Has anyone got any examples of text file collector usage? Is there a particular format I need to adhere to ?

Also interested to understand how people have made use of this collector to collect non standard metrics.

Cheers

Pete

[carlpett]

We definitely should have this type of documentation. For now, I'd suggest looking at the node_exporter's examples for inspiration.

The basic concept is that you have a script/program that outputs Prometheus metrics to disk, and the collector will expose this when it is scraped.

[pete-leese]

hmmm I've had a go but doesn't seem to be working :)

Have setup a test static file to prove the concept;

# HELP test_metric_processes help
# TYPE test_metric_processes gauge
wmi_textfile_test_metric 0
# HELP test_metric help
# TYPE test_metric_processes gauge
wmi_textfile_moo_test 111111

Have enabled the collector and only see the following in the WEB UI:

# HELP wmi_textfile_scrape_error 1 if there was an error opening or reading a file, 0 otherwise
# TYPE wmi_textfile_scrape_error gauge
wmi_textfile_scrape_error 0 

"C:\Program Files\wmi_exporter\wmi_exporter.exe" --log.format logger:eventlog?name=wmi_exporter --telemetry.addr :9182 --collectors.enabled cpu,cs,logical_disk,net,os,process,service,system,textfile --collector.textfile.directory c:\textcollector

here are the command lines used

Cheers

pete

[carlpett]

Hm. Could you up the log level a bit? If running from a console, go with something like this: "C:\Program Files\wmi_exporter\wmi_exporter.exe" --log.level debug --collector.textfile.directory c:\textcollector (the textfile collector is enabled by default).
This will do debug logging to stdout, so you don't have to watch it in the event viewer

[pete-leese]

Will look in the morning.

I was going create a text file output for Windows scheduled tasks 👌🏻

[pete-leese]

Ah, ok yes it was my bad :)

only note is that there seems to be a cosmetic issue;

# HELP wmi_textfile_test_metric Metric read from c:\\textcollector\\test.prom
# TYPE wmi_textfile_test_metric gauge
wmi_textfile_test_metric 0

note the double slash in the path name

[pete-leese]

loosing the will to live today :)

I've now created a script to create a file but I keep getting this error:

ERRO[0208] Error parsing "c:\\Metrics\\scheduledtasks.prom": text format parsing error in line 1: invalid metric name source="textfile.go:242"
Here is my output from the file that was generated....

# HELP wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success
# TYPE wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success gauge
wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{name="BankStaff Agency Costing XXXX",state="Ready"} 1
wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{name="BankStaff Leave Claims XXXX",state="Ready"} 1
wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{name="BankStaff Recalc Agency Charges XXXX",state="Ready"} 1
wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{name="SynchroniseReferenceData.XXXX",state="Ready"} 1
wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{name="RestartBackgroundTasksService.XXXX",state="Ready"} 1
wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{name="RestartBackgroundTasksService.XXXX",state="Ready"} 1

[pete-leese]

What does this mean ?

An error has occurred during metrics gathering:

collected metric wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success label:

[carlpett]

Looks like you have duplicates in your metrics? wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{name="RestartBackgroundTasksService.XXXX",state="Ready"} 1 occurs twice.

[pete-leese]

ahhh - I see now, I'll need to add in the "Path" attribute as is this a genuine scenario.

Additionally, I note that the file should be saved as UTF8 and not UTF8-BOM

[carlpett]

UTF-8 with BOM is a weird thing, since the UTF-8 standard only supports one byte order anyway... What software generated such a file?

[pete-leese]

Powershell script - have got it to ouput a UTF8 and now reads the metrics OK... However ….. with the TaskPath added I now get the following error;

ERRO[1506] Error parsing "c:\Metrics\scheduledtasks.prom": text format parsing error in line 3: invalid escape sequence '\T' source="textfile.go:242"

output file looks like:

wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{taskpath="\Tasks\BankStaff\"

How do I correctly handle \ in the matric value or do I need to strip these out before it generates the output ?

[carlpett]

Hm, if Powershell outputs something like that we might need to hack some support for it, I guess.
As for the backslashes, you'll need to either escape them (replace \ with \\), or strip them out.

[pete-leese]

I tried the double \, expecting it to only displaly a single \ in the output but ends up displaying both backslashes ! - is this a bug given this also displays double backslash on the text file collector path too?

[pete-leese]

Here is my script, if you wish to create some textfile examples for others the use.

$taskPath = "\*\"
$output = "c:\Metrics\scheduledtasks.prom"

Function Get-Tasks ($task) {
    $tasks = @()
    Get-ScheduledTask -TaskPath $taskPath | % { 
        $tasks += @{
           Name = $_.TaskName;
           Status = $_.State;
           TaskPath = $_.TaskPath.Replace('\', '\\')  
           LastResult = (Transform-Status-Code (Get-ScheduledTaskInfo $_).LastTaskResult) 
        }           
    }
    return $tasks
}

Function Transform-Status-Code($LastResult) {
    If ($LastResult -eq 0)  { return 1 }
    return 0
}


Function Build-Metrics-Output($tasks) {
    New-Item -ItemType File $output -Force | Out-Null
    Clear-Content $output -Force
    $obj1 = @"
# HELP wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success help
# TYPE wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success gauge
"@
    $obj1 | Out-File -Force -Encoding utf8 $output
    ForEach ($task in $tasks) {
        $obj2 ="wmi_textfile_scheduled_task_success{taskpath=`"$($task.TaskPath)`",name=`"$($task.Name)`",state=`"$($task.Status)`"} $($task.LastResult)" | Out-File -Encoding utf8 $output -Append
$MyFile = Get-Content $output
$Utf8NoBomEncoding = New-Object System.Text.UTF8Encoding $False
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllLines($output, $MyFile, $Utf8NoBomEncoding)
    }
}

$out = Get-Tasks
Build-Metrics-Output $out

[martinlindhe]

loosing the will to live today :)

powershell can be cruel, I believe in you!

[pete-leese]

Will close this issue as now working. Hopefully this will give others enough info to get going with this too.

[hairyhenderson]

I've run into this as well - since wmi_exporter strips CRLFs (as of #200), I wonder if it'd make sense to _also_ discard BOMs...

[MichaelHellmann]

I just spend 2 hours to figure out the reason for a similar problem.
I created a test.prom file in my textfile_inputs folder using a simple echo "something" > test.prom
That created the file in UCS-2 LE-BOM coding. After 2 hours experimenting with the file content I realized that wrong coding and converted it to UTF-8.
Afterwards everything was working like expected.
Is it possible to check the coding to generate a better error message?
The error was always something like ".. text format parsing error in line 2: invalid metric name ..."

[hairyhenderson]

@MichaelHellmann I wondered if anyone would try to use non-UTF8 when I worked on #285 😉 - checking and giving a better error message is pretty easy - I can take this on 👍

[hairyhenderson]

@MichaelHellmann I've fixed made the error message cleaner in #293