pgwatch3 fails to monitor PgBouncer when connecting to a specific pool: "ERROR: unrecognized configuration parameter 'version'"

[windowsisnotos]

Hello!
I am experiencing an error when trying to monitor a PgBouncer instance with pgwatch3, targeting a specific pool rather than the special pgbouncer database.

My setup:

• pgwatch3 version: 3.6.0

• PgBouncer version: 1.24.1

• Connection string:
  postgresql://pgbouncer:pgbouncer@10.0.20.140:6432/docs

• dbtype: pgbouncer

• preset_config: pgbouncer

Here is the row from my pgwatch.source table:

 name         | pgbouncer-docs
 connstr      | postgresql://pgbouncer:pgbouncer@10.0.20.140:6432/docs
 is_superuser | f
 preset_config| pgbouncer
 dbtype       | pgbouncer
 is_enabled   | t
 group        | default

Problem:

When pgwatch3 tries to connect, I get repeated errors like this in the logs:

[ERROR] [sql:SHOW VERSION] [args:[]] [err:ERROR: unrecognized configuration parameter "version" (SQLSTATE 42704)]

After that, it retries but fails continuously.

What I expect

I expect that monitoring a specific pool (e.g. docs) would either work for PgBouncer stats or, if unsupported, give a clear validation or message.

What I tested

Monitoring via .../pgbouncer (the special database name) works fine.

Monitoring via a specific pool fails with the error above.

Questions

Is it expected that specifying a pool name in the connection string should work for PgBouncer monitoring?

Is this an issue in pgwatch3 or an unsupported scenario?

Is there a workaround to monitor just a specific pool with pgwatch3?

How to reproduce

Just add a source connection with dbtype=pgbouncer and preset_config=pgbouncer, and a connection string pointing to an actual pool rather than pgbouncer.

Thank you for your help!

[pashagolub]

It should be pgbouncer database name. Why? Otherwise pgbouncer sends all queries to underlying Postgres.

[windowsisnotos]

Thank you for the quick and clear response!

That makes perfect sense. If PgBouncer passes the monitoring queries (like SHOW VERSION) to the underlying PostgreSQL instance, it would of course fail. I understand now why connecting to the special pgbouncer database is the correct approach to get statistics.

This leads me to a follow-up question regarding the official documentation, which seems to have led me down the wrong path. On the pgwatch3 documentation page, I found this statement:

"Note that for the "DB Name" field you should insert not "pgbouncer" (although this special DB provides all the statistics) but the real name of the pool you wish to monitor or leave it empty to track all pools."

In the current pgwatch3 web UI, there is no separate "DB Name" field, only a "Connection string". I interpreted this documentation to mean that the specific pool's name should be used as the database name within the connection string (e.g., .../my_actual_pool_name).

Given your explanation, could you please clarify:

1. Is this part of the documentation outdated or incorrect and should be updated to state that pgbouncer must always be used as the database name in the connection string?

2. Or is there another mechanism to monitor a single pool that I am misunderstanding?

If the documentation is indeed outdated, correcting it would be a great help for future users.

Thank you again for your time and for this great tool!