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Matt Palmer 3369422327 Improve DNS response handling to prevent "stuck" records [Fixes #2799] (#3138)
The problem reported in #2799 was that in the event that all records for a
name were removed, the target group was never updated to be the "empty" set.
Essentially, whatever Prometheus last saw as a non-empty list of targets
would stay that way forever (or at least until Prometheus restarted...).  This
came about because of a fairly naive interpretation of what a valid-looking
DNS response actually looked like -- essentially, the only valid DNS responses
were ones that had a non-empty record list.  That's fine as long as your
config always lists only target names which have non-empty record sets; if
your environment happens to legitimately have empty record sets sometimes,
all hell breaks loose (otherwise-cleanly shutdown systems trigger up==0 alerts,
for instance).

This patch is a refactoring of the DNS lookup behaviour that maintains
existing behaviour with regard to search paths, but correctly handles empty
and non-existent record sets.

RFC1034 s4.3.1 says there's three ways a recursive DNS server can respond:

1.  Here is your answer (possibly an empty answer, because of the way DNS
   considers all records for a name, regardless of type, when deciding
   whether the name exists).

2. There is no spoon (the name you asked for definitely does not exist).

3. I am a teapot (something has gone terribly wrong).

Situations 1 and 2 are fine and dandy; whatever the answer is (empty or
otherwise) is the list of targets.  If something has gone wrong, then we
shouldn't go updating the target list because we don't really *know* what
the target list should be.

Multiple DNS servers to query is a straightforward augmentation; if you get
an error, then try the next server in the list, until you get an answer or
run out servers to ask.  Only if *all* the servers return errors should you
return an error to the calling code.

Where things get complicated is the search path.  In order to be able to
confidently say, "this name does not exist anywhere, you can remove all the
targets for this name because it's definitely GORN", at least one server for
*all* the possible names need to return either successful-but-empty
responses, or NXDOMAIN.  If any name errors out, then -- since that one
might have been the one where the records came from -- you need to say
"maintain the status quo until we get a known-good response".

It is possible, though unlikely, that a poorly-configured DNS setup (say,
one which had a domain in its search path for which all configured recursive
resolvers respond with REFUSED) could result in the same "stuck" records
problem we're solving here, but the DNS configuration should be fixed in
that case, and there's nothing we can do in Prometheus itself to fix the
problem.

I've tested this patch on a local scratch instance in all the various ways I
can think of:

1. Adding records (targets get scraped)

2. Adding records of a different type

3. Remove records of the requested type, leaving other type records intact
   (targets don't get scraped)

4. Remove all records for the name (targets don't get scraped)

5. Shutdown the resolver (targets still get scraped)

There's no automated test suite additions, because there isn't a test suite
for DNS discovery, and I was stretching my Go skills to the limit to make
this happen; mock objects are beyond me.
2017-09-15 12:26:10 +02:00
.github Update Issue Template (#2541) 2017-03-29 15:39:38 +01:00
cmd Use log.Logger interface for all discovery services 2017-06-01 11:25:55 -05:00
config Openstack Service Discovery (#2701) 2017-06-01 23:49:02 +02:00
console_libraries Revert use of buildVersion in console templates. (#2579) 2017-04-05 15:19:17 +01:00
consoles Add various persistence related metrics (#2333) 2017-01-11 15:11:19 +00:00
discovery Improve DNS response handling to prevent "stuck" records [Fixes #2799] (#3138) 2017-09-15 12:26:10 +02:00
documentation Fix InfluxDB retention policy usage in read adapter (#2781) 2017-05-29 16:24:24 +02:00
notifier Use log.Logger interface for all discovery services 2017-06-01 11:25:55 -05:00
promql Instrument Prometheus with OpenTracing (#2554) 2017-05-02 18:49:29 -05:00
relabel Stricter Relabel Config Checking for Labeldrop/keep (#2510) 2017-03-18 22:32:08 +01:00
retrieval Use log.Logger interface for all discovery services 2017-06-01 11:25:55 -05:00
rules Simplify code, fix typos. (#2719) 2017-05-15 09:56:09 +01:00
scripts New release process using docker, circleci and a centralized 2016-04-18 22:41:04 +02:00
storage Prevent number of remote write shards from going negative. 2017-09-14 08:07:40 +01:00
template Add externalURL template function (#2716) 2017-05-13 15:47:04 +02:00
util Replace regex with Secret type and remarshal config to hide secrets (#2775) 2017-05-29 12:46:23 +01:00
vendor vendor: fix mixed versions of gophercloud packages 2017-06-07 09:21:43 +02:00
web Backport the templating fix from master 2017-09-14 18:12:00 +02:00
.codeclimate.yml Update .codeclimate.yml 2017-01-23 14:58:53 -05:00
.dockerignore New release process using docker, circleci and a centralized 2016-04-18 22:41:04 +02:00
.gitignore Compress remote storage requests and responses with unframed/raw snappy. (#2696) 2017-05-10 16:42:59 +02:00
.promu.yml promu: Use default Go version again 2016-10-11 11:42:05 +02:00
.travis.yml Use latest released Go 1.8.x 2017-04-04 13:52:18 +03:00
CHANGELOG.md cut 1.7.1 2017-06-12 11:44:04 +02:00
circle.yml Create sha256 checksums file during release 2017-04-15 12:26:51 -03:00
code-of-conduct.md Add CNCF code of conduct as the Prometheus code of conduct 2016-10-19 21:39:19 +02:00
CONTRIBUTING.md Replace AUTHORS.md by an updated MAINTAINERS.md 2017-02-20 11:45:22 +01:00
Dockerfile change deprecated maintainer to label (#2724) 2017-05-29 15:58:40 +02:00
LICENSE Clean up license issues. 2015-01-21 20:07:45 +01:00
MAINTAINERS.md Add maintainers' GitHub usernames to MAINTAINERS.md. 2017-04-25 16:32:23 +10:00
Makefile Test Longer Tests in Travis (#2570) 2017-04-07 13:46:06 +02:00
NOTICE Replace handlebars with the simpler and saner mustache library. 2016-11-17 02:33:12 +00:00
README.md Fix go version hint. (#2750) 2017-05-20 18:33:14 +02:00
VERSION cut 1.7.1 2017-06-12 11:44:04 +02:00

Prometheus Build Status

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Visit prometheus.io for the full documentation, examples and guides.

Prometheus, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, is a systems and service monitoring system. It collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions, displays the results, and can trigger alerts if some condition is observed to be true.

Prometheus' main distinguishing features as compared to other monitoring systems are:

  • a multi-dimensional data model (timeseries defined by metric name and set of key/value dimensions)
  • a flexible query language to leverage this dimensionality
  • no dependency on distributed storage; single server nodes are autonomous
  • timeseries collection happens via a pull model over HTTP
  • pushing timeseries is supported via an intermediary gateway
  • targets are discovered via service discovery or static configuration
  • multiple modes of graphing and dashboarding support
  • support for hierarchical and horizontal federation

Architecture overview

Install

There are various ways of installing Prometheus.

Precompiled binaries

Precompiled binaries for released versions are available in the download section on prometheus.io. Using the latest production release binary is the recommended way of installing Prometheus. See the Installing chapter in the documentation for all the details.

Debian packages are available.

Docker images

Docker images are available on Quay.io.

You can launch a Prometheus container for trying it out with

$ docker run --name prometheus -d -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 quay.io/prometheus/prometheus

Prometheus will now be reachable at http://localhost:9090/.

Building from source

To build Prometheus from the source code yourself you need to have a working Go environment with version 1.8 or greater installed.

You can directly use the go tool to download and install the prometheus and promtool binaries into your GOPATH. We use Go 1.5's experimental vendoring feature, so you will also need to set the GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1 environment variable in this case:

$ GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1 go get github.com/prometheus/prometheus/cmd/...
$ prometheus -config.file=your_config.yml

You can also clone the repository yourself and build using make:

$ mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/prometheus
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/prometheus
$ git clone https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus.git
$ cd prometheus
$ make build
$ ./prometheus -config.file=your_config.yml

The Makefile provides several targets:

  • build: build the prometheus and promtool binaries
  • test: run the tests
  • test-short: run the short tests
  • format: format the source code
  • vet: check the source code for common errors
  • assets: rebuild the static assets
  • docker: build a docker container for the current HEAD

More information

  • The source code is periodically indexed: Prometheus Core.
  • You will find a Travis CI configuration in .travis.yml.
  • See the Community page for how to reach the Prometheus developers and users on various communication channels.

Contributing

Refer to CONTRIBUTING.md

License

Apache License 2.0, see LICENSE.