Running services, network usage, memory usage, bandwidth, disk I/O, successful logins, whether the thing is even alive, etc…
So far my only method has been “hope and pray”.
You guys are monitoring your servers?
How do you monitor your servers?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by 
user224@lemmy.sdf.org@lemmy.sdf.org to selfhosted@lemmy.world
Comments
bertlewirth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
“can’t access this thing, server must be down”
TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ll fix it when I get home
- user224@lemmy.sdf.org@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
I plan to perhaps, just maybe, I am not sure, to try self-hosting an email server. But I’ll need a good uptime.
Although I am really scared about security.
communism@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago I self-host my own email, have done so for years. I’ve not gotten pwned. Use an SSH key and a firewall, only expose the ports that should be public, have reasonable access controls, etc, just practise general cybersecurity—it applies to servers too.
I know everyone complains about hosting email. But I’ve not run into major problems. My emails get through spam filters and I have good uptime. It’s also a fun learning experience.
bertlewirth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, it’s a good learning experience. But…… don’t. Good luck getting around the major email providers’ smart screen shit. It’s probably not gonna happen. I tried a few years ago, and even microslop couldn’t figure out why their shit screen crap wouldn’t allow my emails. But it’s worth doing it in the short term to learn how to do it.
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Been running one for many years, mostly issue-free. Had to request whitelists way in the beginning, but things turned out ok.
Check out this super great guide. workaround.org/ispmail-trixie
modus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Seriously. I just kinda check it out once in a while.
Carrots@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
Lights are on, server is on.
Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I recently found out that this is not always true.
Carrots@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
I never said anything about it responding.
bertlewirth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Kernel panic?
Carrots@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
My kernel is chill.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I notice something stopped working, or someone in the household notices.
Then I go fix it.
DeathByDenim@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago And the best time to notice that the backups weren’t working is when you need access to the backup. 😅
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Backups? In this economy?
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Backups are pretty much the only thing I get notifications for. Otherwise, one app or another on my phone will complain if it loses connection to my server.
blarth@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Whining from end users.
kurcatovium@piefed.social 3 weeks ago That’s the neat part, I don’t.
frongt@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I pay a group of schoolchildren to refresh a group of browser tabs and yell if anything isn’t responding.
There are plenty of previous threads with recent answers if you search.
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 3 weeks ago
Well I used to use VGA for my monitors, now its mostly displayport.
Seriously though, prom+Loki+alloy+a few other things to Grafana, with alerting in grafana.
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Uptime Kuma! For HDDs I have them report their “ping” as percentage full
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Can you teach me this wizardry?
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sure! In Uptime Kuma, add a monitor with type
Push. It gives you a URL with a unique token, and the monitor goes into “down” state if nothing calls that URL within the heartbeat interval. Then have a cron (or a systemd timer or whatever) run this on the machine with the drive every 5 or 10 minutes:use=$(df --output=pcent /mnt/yourdrive | tail -1 | tr -dc ‘0-9’) curl -fsS -G “http://your-kuma:3001/api/push/TOKEN --data-urlencode “status=up” --data-urlencode “msg=${use}% used” --data-urlencode “ping=${use}”
Pingis of course meant to be response time, but Kuma will graph any number you toss in, so you get a “filled” chart for the drive. I also sendstatus=downonce usage passes a threshold. And if the box itself should fall over for some reason, the missing check-ins trigger the alert too.(I typed this quick on my phone, so please double-check and probably don’t blindly copy-paste)
Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Use service, wait for 404 or data loss…
happy_wheels@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago Cockpit. Total gamechanger for me. I don’t have to ssh to my boxes individually to see what’s going on. Instead it’s a web UI AND you can connect basically every server you want to one instance.
github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit
That said. For individual servers? htop/nmon (nmon is FANTASTIC)
ps -ef | grep <whatever you’re looking for> dmseg tail -f /var/log (or whatever log file you care about) netstatthose are all that come to mind right away.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It’s amazing the risk profile of that.
nosuchanon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How do you configure adding multiple servers to the same instance?
- happy_wheels@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
So I actually just went to make a guide on this, demonstrating on my ubuntu 26.04 lab vps, and it appears the connect option is not there.
However on my 24.04 lab vps, it’s there. Same with my local 22.04 systems (yes I know I have to upgrade lmao)
I went to cockpit docks and sure enough, the feature is deprecated :( Dang.
docs.cockpit-project.org/…/feature-machines.html
It was really cool though while it worked.
Owljfien@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
Lol I go to all of my server’s specific cockpit addresses, sounds like I’m doing it wrong, I’ll need to look at connecting them
- happy_wheels@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
So it turns out… you can’t connect them anymore… The feature is deprecated
docs.cockpit-project.org/…/feature-machines.html
(also, I wanted to just link my response from another user who had asimilar question but for whateVER reasyon, Alx won’t let me??)
DarkMetatron@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I have the best detector for issues with my self hosted services: my wife!
trilobite@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Thats cool! My wife thinks i’m crazy just because i homeserve …
pHr34kY@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s running the private DNS for my phone. If it goes down, I realise quite quickly.
I_Am_Jacks_____@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I use naemon (nagios fork) and grafana Loki Prometheus influxdb
i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I get a text pretty quickly.
Joelk111@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They’re in my attached garage. In the living room when it’s quiet I can hear them humming. Does that count?
teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu 2 weeks ago
“Oh the fans ramped up, something must be going down”
dimjim@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
My primary monitoring system is Beszel, but since I just migrated from VMs to LXCs it can’t properly see the memory/CPU usage, so it just checks for disk usage and liveliness. Home assistant with Proxmox & Dockhand integrations gives me the rest of my monitoring needs.
sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I am also using Beszel after using checkmk. For me checkmk was way too complicated (but is also way more powerfull) to setup and maintain propperly. So I switcheed to beszel because it is much easier and good enough for my use case which is:
- Is the thing running at all?
- Disk full?
- CPU, network, etc. on full throttle for some strange reason?
- send me a mail if somethings wrong
Besides that I don’t need anything. The only thing missing is SNMP support to check switches, routers and AP’s.
Alfredolin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’ve been checking several other solutions before and Beszel just hits the spot.
dimjim@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
If you run Proxmox and Proxmox Backup Server, I actually JUST found a better product for my needs, Pulse
My only problem with Beszel is that it doesn’t know about LXCs within Proxmox, so I can’t see if there are CPU/memory issues happening within them. Pulse integrates directly and can see all of it!
If you don’t run LXCs within Proxmox, I’d say stick with Beszel.
popekingjoe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago I usually just walk down the hall and move the mouse. I don’t really need remote monitoring. 😅
testgoofy@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I use Alloy to collect Metrics of the host (Disk usage, CPU, Ram, etc.) and different logs. With Grafana the data is then displayed as a daschboard. If everything goes south, Alertmanager sends Mails to me
RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Monit, simple to setup, gets the job done, runs on my router too.
Cyber@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I have this on my NAS, works well
Legion739@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Grafana dashboard
image You can find more details and the source code here: https://erasmus.works
- user224@lemmy.sdf.org@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Ooooo, that looks nice.
esc@piefed.social@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Prometheus + grafana. It’s overkill tbh, most of the services restart automatically and I mostly ignore it. (it’s an artifact from life where I cared about it)
spacelord@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Exactly this scenario at my place as well. 😄
Limeade3425@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago I started with uptime kuma since it was simple and light on resources. I’ve switched to checkmk community (formerly raw) and really enjoying it. It’s telling me so many things that are wrong that I missed. Like that one time I made a snapshot of a VM then forgot about it for 113 days…
apex@mastodon.uno 3 weeks ago
@Limeade3425 @user224 how did you discover that with checkmk?
- Limeade3425@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
With Uptime Kuma, I just used ping and http sensors so that I knew my stuff was up. When I switched to CheckMK, I installed the agent on all servers and that brought quite a bit more info in, then I added the Proxmox integration and that gave me the snapshot info (as well as more info). I think it automatically pulled in my ZFS info, like zpool status. Then added smart monitoring to my storage so that I can see that my hard drives have been spinning for 13 years and 266 days 😅
CameronDev@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Uptime Kuma, only really care if it’s up or not. Got about 30 services monitored, sending notifications to Signal.
trilobite@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Ah cool! How do you get notifications sent to signal. I’ve always avoided because i didnt like emails of my home setup leaving home in clear
CameronDev@programming.dev 1 week ago
github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api
Its very finicky to setup, but once you get it working its pretty good. Sometimes needs to be reauthenticated though.
Kuma notification settings:
trilobite@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Edit: ah, i see! It’s kuma that allows you to i guess by adding new device on phone Signal
luftruessel@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I have a basic dashboard set up in my home assistant that I never check. Don’t even know how it works, I forgot. That’s why I really want to just put my whole setup in code. That’s why nothing is happening, the chore just seems so daunting.
So I listen for complains ringing through the house and react accordingly.
timochka@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago I use Signoz and OTel collectors to bring in everything from Kubernetes (and also SNMP-to-OTel for the network and NAS stats.)
That covers dashboards and basic alerting. Then on top of that I have an n8n workflow that runs every morning - it pulls all the main stats out of Signoz, as well as issues and their status from my infrastructure repo in Gitlab, and feeds it all into a local LLM (Qwen-3.8-Flash-Next at the moment), which emails me a report on overall cluster health. It also automatically opens a ticket in Gitlab for anything that might need fixing.
It works really nicely, gotta say.
moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 2 weeks ago I go the easy route with munin and wazuh. It comes with a ton of stuff preconfigured
Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 3 weeks ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point DNS Domain Name Service/System LXC Linux Containers
[Thread #122 for this comm, first seen 9th Oct 2026, 13:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
phanto@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I sync my podcasts hourly with Nextcloud and poddersync, so when my servers go down, my phone beeps at me.
mr_jay@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I run UptimeKuma for monitoring a couple of things, but honestly, I’m pretty much my only user and my homelab is independent of the regular home network, so I don’t really care too much. I’ve been considering some simple log monitoring… when I get around to it :-)
I have a robust monitoring system for my Jellyfin server, been running for the last few years. Checks in periodically, at least once per 24 hours and notifies me if it’s down. Doesn’t use any electricity, but does consume a good amount of Cheerios and mac & cheese.
scottmeme@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Does this monitoring system also happen to be a dependent on your taxes?
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I’ve got a few of those services running.
ten8tp@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Lies! It uses electricity!
Indirectly. But as another commenter pointed out, it balances out with the tax rebates.