Configuration

Every variable below is optional — docker-exporter runs with sensible defaults out of the box.

What environment variables does docker-exporter support?

Variable	Default	Description
LISTEN_ADDR	0.0.0.0:9713	Address and port for the HTTP server.
LOG_LEVEL	info	Verbosity: trace, debug, info, warn, error.
EXCLUDE_CONTAINERS	(empty)	Comma-separated glob patterns of container names to exclude.
RUST_LOG	(unset)	Standard tracing filter — overrides LOG_LEVEL when set.

A malformed LISTEN_ADDR, LOG_LEVEL, or EXCLUDE_CONTAINERS value fails loudly at startup (non-zero exit) rather than being silently ignored. RUST_LOG is the exception: an invalid filter directive is ignored and logging falls back to LOG_LEVEL.

RUST_LOG takes module-scoped tracing directives — e.g. RUST_LOG=docker_exporter=debug,bollard=info turns docker-exporter's own logs up to debug while keeping the bollard Docker client at info.

Excluding containers

EXCLUDE_CONTAINERS matches against the container name (without the leading /). Each comma-separated entry is a glob pattern:

• * matches any run of characters
• ? matches a single character
• [abc] matches a character class

Patterns are whole-name anchored, so cache-* excludes cache-redis but not app-cache. A plain name with no wildcards (prometheus) is an exact match — so existing values keep working, no migration needed.

EXCLUDE_CONTAINERS=prometheus,cadvisor,debug-*,*-sidecar

Running docker-exporter alongside cAdvisor during a migration? Exclude cAdvisor's own container the same way — see the docker-exporter vs cAdvisor comparison.

The same fail-fast rule applies here: an unclosed [, for example, is rejected at startup, not silently dropped.

Example (Compose)

services:
  docker-exporter:
    image: ghcr.io/dlepaux/docker-exporter:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      LOG_LEVEL: warn
      EXCLUDE_CONTAINERS: "prometheus,grafana,*-sidecar"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
    ports:
      - "9713:9713"

Next

• Metrics reference — every metric LOG_LEVEL and EXCLUDE_CONTAINERS affect.
• Prometheus & Grafana — scrape docker-exporter and visualize it.