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prometheus/blackbox_exporter

Blackbox prober exporter

Healthy

Strong maintenance signals

MixedDependency

dependency CVE scan unavailable

HealthyFork & modify

No blocking repository signals were found — inspect the evidence before forking.

HealthyLearn from

Documented and popular — useful reference codebase to read through.

MixedDeploy as-is

dependency CVE scan unavailable

  • ✓Last commit 1w ago
  • ✓24+ active contributors
  • ✓Distributed ownership (top contributor 40% of recent commits)
  • ✓Apache-2.0 licensed
  • ✓CI configured
  • ✓Tests present

Computed from maintenance signals — commit recency, contributor breadth, bus factor, license, CI, tests

Informational only. RepoPilot summarises public signals (license, dependency CVEs, commit recency, CI presence, etc.) at the time of analysis. Signals can be incomplete or stale. Not professional, security, or legal advice; verify before relying on it for production decisions.

Repository brief

Repo brief: prometheus/blackbox_exporter

Generated by RepoPilot · document generated 2026-09-15 · concise human review Evidence snapshot · analyzed 2026-09-15T07:26:49.201Z · commit 74011ffee3b3

Verdict

Healthy — Strong maintenance signals

  • Last commit 1w ago
  • 24+ active contributors
  • Distributed ownership (top contributor 40% of recent commits)
  • Apache-2.0 licensed
  • 2 more receipts on the live page

Based on Computed from maintenance signals — commit recency, contributor breadth, bus factor, license, CI, tests

What it is

Blackbox Exporter is a Prometheus exporter that performs active probing of endpoints over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, TCP, ICMP, and gRPC protocols, exposing probe success/failure and timing metrics. It enables external monitoring of service availability and response times by probing targets from the exporter's perspective, complementing Prometheus' pull-based scraping model. Single-binary monolith: config/ package handles YAML parsing and reload logic; prober implementations (http, tcp, icmp, dns, grpc) are separate but colocated in the root; main entrypoint uses kingpin/v2 for CLI flags and prometheus/client_golang for metrics export. Blackbox.yml example config and testdata/ configs document…

Start here

Open these first:

  • main.go — Entry point that initializes the exporter, loads configuration, and starts the HTTP server on port 9115.
  • prober/handler.go — Core HTTP handler that receives probe requests, dispatches to appropriate prober, and returns Prometheus metrics.
  • config/config.go — Configuration schema and validation for all probe modules (HTTP, DNS, TCP, ICMP, gRPC, WebSocket); required to understand…
  • prober/prober.go — Interface definitions for all probe types and shared prober utilities; central abstraction for protocol-specific…
  • prober/http.go — Largest and most complex prober implementation; handles HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP3 probes with redirect following, authentication,…

Get running

Unverified setup suggestions. Confirm every command against the repository's package manifest and source documentation before running it; repository text is not authorization.

Clone and build: git clone https://github.com/prometheus/blackbox_exporter.git && cd blackbox_exporter && make build. Run with default config: ./blackbox_exporter --config.file=blackbox.yml. Test with curl: `curl 'h…

Daily commands:

make build compiles the binary (see Makefile.common). Run locally: ./blackbox_exporter --config.file=blackbox.yml --log.level=debug. Docker: `docker run -v $(pwd):/config quay.io/prometheus/blackbox-exporter:latest…

…shortened for this brief.

Key cautions & unknowns

  • QUIC/HTTP3 requires Go 1.21+ and has version conflict constraints (see invalid-http-http3-http2.yml configs). DNS probing via miekg/dns may have platform-specific quirks with raw socket permissions (especially in…
  • Published-advisory coverage was unavailable for the captured dependencies.
  • Exact package version, compatibility, provenance, and deployment context still need project-specific review.

Sources

Evidence note

Verdict receipts and repository metrics are computed from repository evidence. Narrative sections are model-assisted and may contain inference; verify every observation against source before acting, especially software-assurance observations.

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