If I add additional metrics for Prometheus/Grafana, the default metrics are no longer populated

[deadmanoz]

I added some additional metrics, e.g. related to fee rate, and found that the default metrics were no longer populated.

That is, in specifying metrics such as the following in my network.yaml, the default Grafana dashboard no longer had any data. I was expecting and metrics I specified to be in addition/additive to the default metrics

metrics: fee_estimate_1=estimatesmartfee(1)["feerate"] fee_estimate_2=estimatesmartfee(2)["feerate"] fee_estimate_6=estimatesmartfee(6)["feerate"] fee_estimate_24=estimatesmartfee(24)["feerate"]

So if the user wishes to add additional metrics and maintain the default metrics, they must currently add the default metrics to their metrics specification:

metrics: blocks=getblockcount() inbounds=getnetworkinfo()["connections_in"] outbounds=getnetworkinfo()["connections_out"] mempool_size=getmempoolinfo()["size"] fee_estimate_1=estimatesmartfee(1)["feerate"] fee_estimate_2=estimatesmartfee(2)["feerate"] fee_estimate_6=estimatesmartfee(6)["feerate"] fee_estimate_24=estimatesmartfee(24)["feerate"]

Should any metrics provided by the user be additive to the default metrics? Or is the current behaviour ok - user has full control over what metrics are collected. The main downside of the latter is that the user will have empty Grafana Dashboards:

[pinheadmz]

Fair point, we could add a second env variable like additionalMetrics in resources/images/exporter/bitcoin-exporter.py and if present, concat the contents to the default metrics. I still want to be able to not query the default metrics as well though, so I'd suggest we keep the original metrics and allow it to be replaced.

Also note, the dashboard you are seeing here is specifically tied to the default metrics and adding additional metrics to the chart will not make anything new appear here automatically. You'd need to use the Grafana UI to add the new metrics, or create a new dashboard entirely for your specific experiment.

The current default dashboard is defined in resources/charts/grafana-dashboards/files/default_dashboard.json

[deadmanoz]

So there'd be:

• metrics - if present whatever is there will override the defaults, user can provide an empty set or subset of the defaults?
• additionalMetrics - additional to whatever is specified in metrics

Yeah I had created a separate dashboard for some new metrics (not showing anything interesting here)

[pinheadmz]

Yeah I think that makes sense? You can make the changes to the code and image file on a branch and test it locally by building the container. You may need to set the image in the chart 'pullPolicy: Never' to force k8s to pull your local image and not the existing one.