chrony_exporter

Chainguard Container for chrony_exporter

Minimalist Wolfi-based image for Chrony Exporter - a Prometheus exporter for Chrony NTP metrics.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/chrony_exporter:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

This image is designed to provide a secure and minimal environment for running Chrony Exporter. The image is built on Wolfi, providing regular security updates and a minimal attack surface. Chainguard's chrony_exporter image maintains functional parity with the upstream image.

The exporter listens on port 9123 by default and exposes metrics at the /metrics endpoint.

Getting Started

Docker

To run the Chrony Exporter with Docker, connecting via Unix socket:

docker run -d \
  --name chrony_exporter \
  -p 9123:9123 \
  -v /var/run/chrony:/var/run/chrony:ro \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/chrony_exporter:latest \
  --chrony.address=unix:///var/run/chrony/chronyd.sock

Alternatively, connect via UDP (port 323):

docker run -d \
  --name chrony_exporter \
  -p 9123:9123 \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/chrony_exporter:latest \
  --chrony.address=host.docker.internal:323

To verify the exporter is running, check the metrics endpoint:

curl http://localhost:9123/metrics

Kubernetes

The chrony_exporter is typically deployed as a sidecar container alongside Chrony in a DaemonSet to monitor NTP synchronization on each node. The exporter can connect to Chrony via Unix socket or UDP (port 323).

Example DaemonSet deployment with Chrony exporter as a sidecar using UDP connection:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: chrony-exporter
  labels:
    app: chrony-exporter
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: chrony-exporter
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: chrony-exporter
      annotations:
        prometheus.io/scrape: "true"
        prometheus.io/port: "9123"
        prometheus.io/path: "/metrics"
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: chrony
        image: cturra/ntp:latest
        securityContext:
          capabilities:
            add:
            - SYS_TIME
        env:
        - name: NTP_SERVERS
          value: "time.google.com"
        - name: ENABLE_SYSCLK
          value: "false"
      - name: chrony-exporter
        image: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/chrony_exporter:latest
        args:
        - "--chrony.address=127.0.0.1:323"
        ports:
        - containerPort: 9123
          name: metrics
          protocol: TCP
        resources:
          requests:
            cpu: 10m
            memory: 16Mi
          limits:
            cpu: 100m
            memory: 64Mi
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: chrony-exporter
  labels:
    app: chrony-exporter
spec:
  selector:
    app: chrony-exporter
  ports:
  - port: 9123
    targetPort: 9123
    name: metrics

The exporter connects to Chrony via UDP on port 323 using localhost (both containers share the same network namespace in a pod).

Command Line Options

Common command line options:

• --chrony.address: Address of the Chrony daemon. Supports Unix socket (unix:///var/run/chrony/chronyd.sock) or UDP (localhost:323)
• --collector.sources: Enable sources collector
• --web.listen-address: Address to listen on for web interface and telemetry (default: :9123)
• --web.telemetry-path: Path under which to expose metrics (default: /metrics)

Documentation and Resources

• Chrony Exporter GitHub
• Chrony NTP Documentation
• Prometheus Documentation

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.