lnd_peer_count of type counter instead of gauge

[bindermuehle]

I'm trying to setup a dashboard for our lnd node with lndmon and I am running into an issue that the lnd_peer_count metric type is a counter instead of a gauge.

To me it seems this value can go and and down and thus a gauge is better suited.

Thanks for clarifying!

lndmon/collectors/peer_collector.go

Line 98 in d0d214c

p.peerCountDesc, prometheus.CounterValue,

	ch <- prometheus.MustNewConstMetric(
		p.peerCountDesc, prometheus.CounterValue,
		float64(len(listPeersResp)),
	)

[Roasbeef]

IIUC, we added this as a count so we could compute things like the rate of peer flapping (connects/disconnects per second).

[bindermuehle]

I found the computation of flap rate calculation here:

lndmon/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/peers.json

Line 145 in d0d214c

"expr": "deriv(lnd_peer_count{namespace=\"$namespace\",pod=\"$node\"}[40s])",

it is using the deriv function which according to prometheus documentation should only be used with gauges:
https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/querying/functions/#deriv

[Roasbeef]

it is using the deriv function which according to prometheus documentation should only be used with gauges:

Ahh, TIL!

We'd def accept a PR to either export a new gauge along side, then we can later deprecate the existing one.

[bindermuehle]

ok, I'm not that deep into the project but if I find time I'll take a look. Do you have a naming scheme for this scenario?
I would suggest something like
lnd_peer_count_new or lnd_peer_count_gauge