Prober Customizations

How to add Auth to the prober or further configurations?

To define how a probe behaves (e.g., add basic auth, headers, timeout, method), we will configure a module in the Blackbox Exporter config.

1. Create a Blackbox Exporter Config file

You will need to create a new file, and then mount it over the existing provided vconfig

1. Create a new file:

 alloy/blackbox-exporter.yml

1. Add the existing defaults

modules:
    http_get_200:
        prober: http
        timeout: 5s
        http:
        valid_http_versions: ["HTTP/1.1", "HTTP/2.0"]
        valid_status_codes: [200]  # Defaults to 2xx
        method: GET
        preferred_ip_protocol: "ip4" # defaults to "ip6"
        tls_config:
            insecure_skip_verify: true

1. Add your own module to the modules in that file

     http_2xx_custom:
       prober: http
       timeout: 5s
       http:
         valid_http_versions: ["HTTP/1.1", "HTTP/2.0"]
         valid_status_codes: [200]  # Defaults to 2xx
         method: GET
         preferred_ip_protocol: "ip4" # defaults to "ip6"
         tls_config:
           insecure_skip_verify: true
         basic_auth:
           username: my-user
           password: example-pass
   

This example adds a module named http_2xx_custom that adds some basic auth credentials

---

2. Reference the new module in your prober config

In your probe YAML file, reference the module in the module field of the labels section:

    - targets:
        - https://myservice.example.com/health
      labels:
        name: my-service
        module: http_2xx_custom      # Optional - overrides the default Blackbox module

3. Mount the config file

You lastly need to mount the new config file and refer to it in docker compose

 alloy:
    image: cogstacksystems/cogstack-observability-alloy:latest
...
    volumes:
      - ${BASE_DIR-.}/alloy/blackbox-exporter.yml:/etc/alloy/blackbox-exporter.yml
...