Running node exporter as a service

Creating node-exporter service file

1. First of we need to create Prometheus user and group both.

    sudo groupadd --system prometheus
    sudo useradd -s /sbin/nologin --system -g prometheus prometheus
   

2. Create this directory /var/lib/node and move the extracted node binary to this directory mv node_exporter /var/lib/node/

3. Now, We have to create a service file for node-exporter into sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/node-exporter.service and paste the following content/

    [Unit]
    Description=Prometheus Node Exporter
    Documentation=https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/
    Wants=network-online.target
    After=network-online.target
   
    [Service]
    Type=simple
    User=prometheus
    Group=prometheus
    ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
    ExecStart=/var/lib/node/node_exporter
   
    SyslogIdentifier=prometheus_node_exporter
    Restart=always
   
    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

4. Change ownership and grant read access as below to the files.

    sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /var/lib/node
    sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /var/lib/node/*
    sudo chmod -R 775 /var/lib/node
    sudo chmod -R 775 /var/lib/node/*
   

5. Restart the daemon, enable node service and start it.

    sudo systemctl daemon-reload
    sudo systemctl enable
    sudo systemctl start
    sudo systemctl status
   

Note: To troubleshoot any issue use journalctl -n 100 command. To start the start the service you should mention the service name you added in the 3rd step.

Access with Prometheus end points