Linux mint and apt monitoring

[Qwinn1]

Hello,

Thank you for all your great work! For the record, I'm new to node exporter. I get the apt monitor automatically installed when I install prometheus-node-exporter now, I assume that's coming from this repo.

Anyway. Linux Mint has not been creating /var/run/reboot_required for some time, since Mint 20 in 2020. It creates /var/run/do-not-hibernate instead, for whatever reason.

Source: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=339377

These are the only metrics I'm actually seeing being published in /var/lib/prometheus/node-exporter/apt.prom:

apt_upgrades_held: Accurate
apt_autoremove_pending: Accurate
apt_package_cache_timestamp: Can't verify but assume accurate
node_reboot_required: Published, but inaccurate due to the reboot_required -> do-not-hibernate issue described above

There's only one Apt Monitor dashboard I can find on Grafana Labs (which unfortunately doesn't seem to have a panel for any of the info published above except for the inaccurate reboot_required, so it's useless to me atm). That dashboard - https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/17697-apt-monitoring/ - seems to expect apt_upgrades_pending and apt_security_upgrades_pending, neither of which I am seeing published in apt.prom.

If there's some sort of additional configuration I needed to do to get those extra parameters published, please let me know. I am currently testing just what gets auto-configured by installing prometheus-node-exporter.

[Qwinn1]

Addendum: In the Mint 22.1 release notes, it was stated that Linux Mint moved from more common apt tools to Aptkit and Captain.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?s=kit&submit=Search

Aptkit

The transition towards Aptkit and Captain is now finished. Starting with Linux Mint 22.1, set to be released this December, none of our projects will depend on aptdaemon, synaptic, gdebi or apturl anymore."

I have no idea if this is relevant to anything you're doing here. 22.1 was released in 2024 so it's not relevant to the missing reboot_required issue which apparently manifested in 2020. And I've noticed no differences in my own use of the apt package manager. But I figured I'd mention this as possibly relevant if you guys decide to try to hunt down what's going on here.