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”.

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    19 days ago

    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.

      • bertlewirth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        18 days 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. It’s not in their best interest to fix it. So they don’t. But it’s worth doing it in the short term to learn how to do it. Teaches you about email, spf, dkim etc. which actually does translate to real world skills. I used what I learnt setting it up in my real life job.

        • Dultas@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          18 days ago

          Yeah, email is one of the more annoying things to self host. Google rejects mine because my ISP has all their non static IPs on block lists (even though my IP hasn’t changed once since I’ve been with them it’s still not “static”, can’t change the reverse DNS) and I’m not paying 150% more a month for a business account to get a static IP. I ended up just using a free email relay. Still had to setup SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and all that jazz still.

          • bertlewirth@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            Yup. It’s so damn annoying hosting email. Do it once to learn, but don’t do it as a permanent solution. It takes so much maintenance to keep it going, if you even do get it working.

            • InFerNo@lemmy.mlEnglish
              0·
              18 days ago

              What maintenance do you mean? run OS updates and pay the vps bill. that’s true for any self hosted application. which specific maintenance are you referring to?

              • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
                01·
                18 days ago

                Setting up the newfangled security thing. TLS, DKIM, DMARC, SPF are the big ones over the years. Finding out you’ve been silently blackisted by a provider and hoping and praying they’ll answer your request to unblock. Managing your own spam filter.

  • Joelk111@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    18 days ago

    They’re in my attached garage. In the living room when it’s quiet I can hear them humming. Does that count?

  • TheHive@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    18 days 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.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    11 days 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
    ISP Internet Service Provider
    LXC Linux Containers
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    NFS Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency
    RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
    SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
    TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL
    ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

    10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.

    [Thread #122 for this comm, first seen 9th Oct 2026, 13:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

    • DeathByDenim@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      18 days ago

      And the best time to notice that the backups weren’t working is when you need access to the backup. 😅

      • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        18 days ago

        Backups? In this economy?

        But I need to get something working. I am about to move to VaultWarden and that makes me very nervous.

        • Carol2852@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          18 days ago

          I run a vaultwarden container since forever and it’s really smooth. All updates went through just fine, never had an issue with it.

  • happy_wheels@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    19 days 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.

    https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit

    That said. For individual servers?

    htop/nmon (Get nmon straight from the source! https://nmon.sourceforge.io/pmwiki.php) for a birds-eye sysmon view of things

    ps -ef | grep <whatever you're looking for> for investigating stuck/hung/zombie processes

    dmseg

    tail -f /var/log (or whatever log file you care about)

    netstat for net statistics (i think ntop used to be a thing but idk anymore>…)

    df -h to look at disk usage

    those are all that come to mind right away.

    EDIT: formatting and quick explanation of what each tool does

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    18 days ago

    SNMP.

    The old engine was nagios. The new engine will be telegraf -> mqtt -> brokerfest -> timescale -> Prometheus.

    I guess. Not sure yet. The brokerfest is a series of broker pubsub between sites to both split out data from the stream for off-site CC, or pull its own subscriptions in. Data could go host <- telegraf -> broker -> remote broker -> remote timescale -> remote Prometheus

      • lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        18 days 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}”

        Ping is 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 send status=down once 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)