nextcloud-exporter

A prometheus exporter for getting some metrics of a Nextcloud server instance.

Installation

Docker Image

The preferred way to use nextcloud-exporter is by running the provided Docker image. It is currently provided on Docker Hub and GitHub Container Registry:

• ghcr.io/xperimental/nextcloud-exporter
• xperimental/nextcloud-exporter

The following tags are available:

• x.y.z pointing to the release with that version
• latest pointing to the most recent released version
• master pointing to the latest build from the default branch

Pre-built binaries

The releases page contains pre-built binaries for AMD64 and ARM64 linux.

Build from Source

If you have a recent Go installation (see go.mod for the minimum version), Git and GNU Make, the following commands will check out the repository and compile the binary from source:

git clone https://github.com/xperimental/nextcloud-exporter.git
cd nextcloud-exporter
make

After this there should be a nextcloud-exporter binary in your current directory.

Client credentials

The exporter supports two different approaches for authenticating with the Nextcloud server:

• Token authentication (needs Nextcloud 22 or newer)
• Username and password

If you have Nextcloud 22 then using the token authentication is recommended, because it does not need a normal user account with admin privileges.

If both a token and username/password are specified in the configuration, the token will take precedence.

Token authentication

Nextcloud 22 and newer versions support "token authentication" for the serverinfo. That way, accessing this information does not need a normal user account with admin privileges. You can set the token to anything you like, but the recommendation is to set it to a long random number:

# Generate random value (for example using openssl)
TOKEN=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
# Set token (using the occ console application)
occ config:app:set serverinfo token --value "$TOKEN"

You can then use this generated token in the exported configuration instead of username and password.

Username and password authentication

To access the serverinfo API you will need the credentials of an admin user. It is recommended to create a separate user for that purpose. It's also possible for the exporter to generate an "app password", so that the real user password is never saved to the configuration. This also makes the exporter show up in the security panel of the user as a connected application.

To let the nextcloud-exporter create an app password, start it with the --login parameter:

nextcloud-exporter --login --server https://nextcloud.example.com

The exporter will generate a login URL that you need to open in your browser. Be sure to login with the correct user if you created a special user for the exporter as the app password will be bound to the logged-in user. Once the access has been granted using the browser the exporter will output the username and password that need to be entered into the configuration.

When the login process is done, it is possible to disable filesystem access for the generated token in the user's settings:

---

The interactive login can also be done using a Docker container:

docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/xperimental/nextcloud-exporter --login --server https://nextcloud.example.com

The login flow needs at least Nextcloud 16 to work.

Usage

$ nextcloud-exporter --help
Usage of nextcloud-exporter:
  -a, --addr string          Address to listen on for connections. (default ":9205")
      --auth-token string    Authentication token. Can replace username and password when using Nextcloud 22 or newer.
  -c, --config-file string   Path to YAML configuration file.
      --enable-info-apps     Enable gathering of apps-related metrics.
      --enable-info-update   Enable gathering of system update-related metrics.
      --login                Use interactive login to create app password.
  -p, --password string      Password for connecting to Nextcloud.
  -s, --server string        URL to Nextcloud server.
  -t, --timeout duration     Timeout for getting server info document. (default 5s)
      --tls-skip-verify      Skip certificate verification of Nextcloud server.
  -u, --username string      Username for connecting to Nextcloud.
  -V, --version              Show version information and exit.

After starting the server will offer the metrics on the /metrics endpoint, which can be used as a target for prometheus.

Example Dashboard

The repository contains an example Grafana dashboard that can be imported into Grafana. The dashboard is also available as ID 20716 from the Grafana Dashboard Exchange.

Configuration methods

There are three methods of configuring the nextcloud-exporter (higher methods take precedence over lower ones):

• Environment variables
• Configuration file
• Command-line parameters

Environment variables

All settings can also be specified through environment variables:

Environment variable	Flag equivalent
NEXTCLOUD_SERVER	--server
NEXTCLOUD_USERNAME	--username
NEXTCLOUD_PASSWORD	--password
NEXTCLOUD_AUTH_TOKEN	--auth-token
NEXTCLOUD_LISTEN_ADDRESS	--addr
NEXTCLOUD_TIMEOUT	--timeout
NEXTCLOUD_TLS_SKIP_VERIFY	--tls-skip-verify
NEXTCLOUD_INFO_APPS	--enable-info-apps
NEXTCLOUD_INFO_UPDATE	--enable-info-update

Configuration file

The --config-file option can be used to read the configuration options from a YAML file:

# required
server: "https://example.com"
# required for token authentication
authToken: "example-token"
# required for username/password authentication
username: "example"
password: "example"
# optional
listenAddress: ":9205"
timeout: "5s"
tlsSkipVerify: false
info:
  apps: false
  update: false

Loading Credentials from Files

Both the authentication token and the password can optionally be read from a separate file instead of directly from the input methods above.

This can be achieved by setting the value to the path of the file prefixed with an "@", for example:

# Authentication token
nextcloud-exporter -c config-without-token.yml --auth-token @/path/to/tokenfile
# Password
nextcloud-exporter -c config-without-password.yml -p @/path/to/passwordfile

This also works when the password or token is set using one of the other configuration modes (configuration file or environment variables).

Other information

Info URL

The exporter reads the metrics from the Nextcloud server using its "serverinfo" API. You can find the URL of this API in the administrator settings in the "Monitoring" section. It should look something like this:

https://example.com/ocs/v2.php/apps/serverinfo/api/v1/info

The path will be automatically added to the server URL you provide, so in the above example setting --server https://example.com would be sufficient.

If you open this URL in a browser you should see an XML structure with the information that will be used by the exporter.

Scrape configuration

The exporter will query the nextcloud server every time it is scraped by prometheus. If you want to reduce load on the nextcloud server you need to change the scrape interval accordingly:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'nextcloud'
    scrape_interval: 90s
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9205']

Exported metrics

These metrics are exported by nextcloud-exporter:

name	description
nextcloud_active_users_daily_total	Number of active users in the last 24 hours
nextcloud_active_users_hourly_total	Number of active users in the last hour
nextcloud_active_users_total	Number of active users for the last five minutes
nextcloud_apps_installed_total	Number of currently installed apps
nextcloud_apps_updates_available_total	Number of apps that have available updates
nextcloud_database_info	Contains meta information about the database as labels. Value is always 1.
nextcloud_database_size_bytes	Size of database in bytes as reported from engine
nextcloud_exporter_info	Contains meta information of the exporter. Value is always 1.
nextcloud_files_total	Number of files served by the instance
nextcloud_free_space_bytes	Free disk space in data directory in bytes
nextcloud_php_info	Contains meta information about PHP as labels. Value is always 1.
nextcloud_php_memory_limit_bytes	Configured PHP memory limit in bytes
nextcloud_php_upload_max_size_bytes	Configured maximum upload size in bytes
nextcloud_scrape_errors_total	Counts the number of scrape errors by this collector
nextcloud_shares_federated_total	Number of federated shares by direction sent / received
nextcloud_shares_total	Number of shares by type: authlink: shared password protected links group: shared groups link: all shared links user: shared users mail: shared by mail room: shared with room
nextcloud_system_info	Contains meta information about Nextcloud as labels. Value is always 1.
nextcloud_system_update_available	Contains information whether a system update is available: 0: no update available 1: nextcloud update available In case of 1=yes, available_version label contains the new version. This metric is only available if activated.
nextcloud_up	Indicates if the metrics could be scraped by the exporter: 1: successful 0: unsuccessful (server down, server/endpoint not reachable, invalid credentials, ...)
nextcloud_users_total	Number of users of the instance