systemdreport receiver

systemdreportreceiver is an OpenTelemetry Collector receiver for systemd report metrics (systemd v260+). It scrapes every socket under /run/systemd/report/ that serves io.systemd.Metrics and emits one resource per source, identified by its systemd unit. It runs the same scraper and mapper as sdmetrics-exporter, so the data is identical.

Type	systemdreport
Signals	metrics
Stability	alpha
Module	github.com/rossedman/sdmetrics/receiver/systemdreportreceiver
Tags	receiver/systemdreportreceiver/vX.Y.Z
Built with	mdatagen (metadata.yaml) and scraperhelper
Collector	go.opentelemetry.io/collector v0.163.0 / v1.69.0

The receiver is not in a Collector distribution yet; build one with ocb. It is written to the conventions of opentelemetry-collector-contrib, with a view to proposing it there.

Configuration

receivers:
  systemdreport:
    collection_interval: 30s
    naming: otel
    resource:
      deployment.environment: prod

exporters:
  otlp:
    endpoint: otel-gateway.internal:4317

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [systemdreport]
      exporters: [otlp]

Every key is optional:

Key	Default	Description
collection_interval	30s	Time between scrapes. (The scraperhelper default is one minute; this receiver uses 30 s.)
initial_delay	1s	Delay before the first scrape.
timeout	0 (none)	Bound on a whole scrape, from scraperhelper.
directory	/run/systemd/report	The report directory. Per-user sources live in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/systemd/report.
include	all	Only sources matching one of these path.Match patterns, such as io.systemd.*.
exclude	none	Skip sources matching one of these patterns.
source_timeout	2s	Time budget per source. Must be positive.
concurrency	8	Sources scraped at once. Must be positive.
manager_socket	/run/systemd/io.systemd.Manager	The service manager asked which unit owns a socket-activated source. Use $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/systemd/io.systemd.Manager with a per-user directory.
naming	raw	raw or otel. See naming modes.
resource	none	Attributes added to every resource.
service_names	none	service.name per source.
units	none	systemd.unit.name per source, for socket-activated sources on systemd v260 and v261.
self_metrics	true	Emit the sdmetrics.* self-metrics resource.

A fuller example, with several instances:

receiver/systemdreportreceiver/testdata/config.yaml

systemdreport:
systemdreport/custom:
  collection_interval: 15s
  directory: /run/user/1000/systemd/report
  include: ["io.systemd.*", "io.example.*"]
  exclude: ["io.systemd.Network"]
  source_timeout: 1s
  concurrency: 4
  manager_socket: /run/user/1000/systemd/io.systemd.Manager
  naming: otel
  resource:
    deployment.environment: prod
  service_names:
    io.example.Queue: queue
  units:
    io.example.Queue: queued.service
  self_metrics: false
systemdreport/badnaming:
  naming: fancy

systemdreport/badnaming is there to test validation: naming: fancy is rejected with naming "fancy": want raw or otel.

What it emits

One resource per source, with the attributes described in OpenTelemetry mapping, and one scope per resource, named github.com/rossedman/sdmetrics/receiver/systemdreportreceiver with the Collector's build version. Gauges, monotonic cumulative sums with start times, and string families as gauges of 1 with a systemd.value attribute. Self-metrics come last, on a resource with service.name="sdmetrics".

Behaviour

Situation	What the receiver does
No /run/systemd/report/ (systemd < v260)	Logs one warning and reports nothing, without failing the pipeline.
One source fails	The others are still reported; sdmetrics.source.up is 0 for it, and the error is logged at debug level.
Unknown or object-typed families	Dropped and counted in sdmetrics.metrics.dropped.

Permissions

The Collector process needs what the exporter needs: read access to the sockets (root, the sdmetrics group, or systemd-journal for journald's source), /proc/<pid>/cgroup of other processes for unit identity, and /run/systemd/io.systemd.Manager for socket-activated sources. Inside a container, mount /run/systemd/report and the manager socket, and run in the host's PID namespace for /proc; otherwise sources are scraped but not attributed. See Unit identity.

Exporter or receiver?

	sdmetrics-exporter	systemdreport receiver
Deploy as	one small static binary per host, deb/rpm	part of a Collector you build
Outputs	OTLP gRPC/HTTP, Prometheus	anything the Collector exports
Processing	none	processors, batching, retries, queues
Hardened unit	included (score 1.5)	yours to write

Use the exporter when you want the smallest footprint per host; use the receiver when a Collector already runs on the host.