BIRD_EXPORTER(1)

okay bestie, welcome to bird_exporter's Manual 💖 — this is BIRD_EXPORTER(1) from the General Commands Manual. Metadata vibe check: date: 2018-06-20, footer: bird_exporter, header: "bird_exporter's Manual", layout: page, license: "Licensed under the MIT license", section: 1, title: BIRD_EXPORTER. The printed footer date is October 2026. Now let’s get into it 🫶

💖 --NAME 💖

The page literally says --NAME, so here we are, no cap.

bird_exporter - A protocol state exporter for the BIRD routing daemon to use with Prometheus

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

bird_exporter [OPTIONS]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

bird_exporter is a metric exporter for the BIRD routing daemon to use with Prometheus. Since bird_exporter uses the BIRD Unix socket(s), BIRD needs to be installed on the same machine as bird_exporter. The user executing bird_exporter must have read/write permission to access the BIRD Unix sockets. periodt.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -bird.ipv4 — get protocols from bird (heads up: not compatible with -bird.v2).
• -bird.ipv6 — get protocols from bird6 (again, not compatible with -bird.v2).
• -bird.socket /path/to/socket — socket to communicate with the bird routing daemon.
• -bird.socket6 /path/to/socket — socket to communicate with the bird6 routing daemon (not compatible with -bird.v2).
• -bird.v2 — BIRD major version >= 2.0 (multi channel protocols).
• -format.new — new metric format (more convenient / generic).
• -proto.bgp — enables metrics for protocol BGP.
• -proto.direct — enables metrics for protocol Direct.
• -proto.kernel — enables metrics for protocol Kernel.
• -proto.ospf — enables metrics for protocol OSPF.
• -proto.static — enables metrics for protocol Static.
• -proto.babel — enables metrics for protocol Babel.
• -version — print version information.
• -web.listen-address [address]:port — address on which to expose metrics and web interface.
• -web.telemetry-path path — path under which to expose metrics (default "/metrics").

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Version 2.0 of BIRD supports both IPv4 and IPv6 in a single daemon. Since version 1.1 of bird_exporter, it can be used with BIRD 2.0+ using the -bird.v2 option. When using this option, bird_exporter queries the same socket for both IPv4 and IPv6. In this mode the IP protocol is determined by the channel information, and options -bird.ipv4, -bird.ipv6 and -bird.socket6 are ignored. iykyk 👑

To get meaningful uptime information, BIRD needs to be configured to use ISO-format timestamps:

timeformat protocol iso long;

In version 1.0, a new metric format was introduced. To avoid backwards incompatibility, the new format is optional and can be enabled by using the -format.new option. The new format handles protocols more generically and allows for a better query structure. It also adheres more to the Prometheus metric naming best practices. In both formats protocol specific metrics are prefixed with the protocol name (e.g. OSPF running metric). slay ✨

🌈 OLD METRIC FORMAT EXAMPLE 🌈

bgp4_session_prefix_count_import{name="bgp1"} 600000
bgp6_session_prefix_count_import{name="bgp1"} 50000
ospfv3_running{name="ospf1"} 1

🌟 NEW METRIC FORMAT EXAMPLE 🌟

bird_protocol_prefix_import_count{name="bgp1",proto="BGP",ip_version="4"} 600000
bird_protocol_prefix_import_count{name="bgp1",proto="BGP",ip_version="6"} 50000
bird_ospfv3_running{name="ospf1"} 1

Author credit: Daniel Czerwonk — daniel@dan-nrw.de 💌. The page is Licensed under the MIT license, bestie.

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source/version sign-off: this is BIRD_EXPORTER(1) from the General Commands Manual, footer bird_exporter, printed date October 2026, metadata date 2018-06-20. mwah 💋