Mailcow-exporter (Prometheus ) container has a connection problem

yuv-101

Hi there
everyone 👋👋,

I have been configured an Prometheus container my mailcow network. The problem is that the
mail server (mailcow) itself refuses to connect this container. I did open the port 9090 in the firewall , checked
that the Prometheus container is running , and checked that mailcow config file as a matter of fact it seems well configured. What else I need to check t fix this problem?

ETNyx

You are implementing this? https://docs.mailcow.email/third_party/prometheus_exporter/third_party-prometheus_exporter/#prometheus-config

yuv-101

Yes indeed , that is what I am trying to implement

ETNyx

Ok, expect that you follow all steps and all was clear? Can you share your docker-compose.override.yml file. Also you are using some firewall on top of what MC recommended (none,..). Can you share your iptables -L?

yuv-101

I did not make the same steps as the documentation. And sure,
this is the docker_compose.override.yml file:

ETNyx

Well to get data from MC you need an exporter. So remove this from your override and implement propper exporter as docs told you.

services:
    prometheus-exporter-mailcow:
      image: ghcr.io/mailcow/prometheus-exporter:2
      ports:
        - "9099:9099" # < allow connection from external Prometheus if needed
      restart: always
      environment:
        MAILCOW_EXPORTER_HOST: "<your-mail-domain>" # Replace with your Mailcow hostname
        MAILCOW_EXPORTER_API_KEY: "<your-API-Key>" # Replace with your API key
        MAILCOW_EXPORTER_SECURITY_TOKEN: "<your-secure-token>" # Replace with your secure key
        # MAILCOW_EXPORTER_SECURITY_DISABLE_ACCESS_PROTECTION: "true" # Uncomment only if it is safe to disable token authentication (e.g., internal network only)
      dns:
        - ${IPV4_NETWORK:-172.22.1}.254
      networks:
        mailcow-network:
          ipv4_address: ${IPV4_NETWORK:-172.22.1}.209
          aliases:
            - prometheus-exporter

Than I would recommend to get another VPS and make Grafana stack where you configure scraper for this exporter by REAL_IP:9099. Better to not mix those two stack.

Or use rpi at your home, your choice, but keep MC as vanilla as you can to prevent future problems.

yuv-101

Ok thank you very much 😀😀.

One more thing, after a configured the exporter completely how to I get access to the Prometheus container via web?

ETNyx

Than you need Grafana stack, I suggest to use different system to this, bacouse it can be quiet resource hungry if you start use it. I do, and I use it as centralized metrics and logs system for about dozen of system.

When you have Grafana stack (at least prom/prometheus and grafana/grafana) you must make prometheus scrapper config like

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'mailcow'
    static_configs:
      - targets: [ 'mailcow_exporter_or_IP_depend_on_your_setup:9099' ]
    params:
      MAILCOW_EXPORTER_HOST: [ 'mail.example.com' ]
      MAILCOW_EXPORTER_API_KEY: [ 'YOUR-APIKEY-HERE' ]
      token: [ 'YOUR-APIKEY-HERE' ] # if you MAILCOW_EXPORTER_TOKEN_DISABLE=false

Than in Grafana you can import dashboard remkolodder/mailcow-dashboard as docs stated