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”.
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.
Lies! It uses electricity!
Indirectly. But as another commenter pointed out, it balances out with the tax rebates.
I have the best detector for issues with my self hosted services: my wife!
Thats cool! My wife thinks i’m crazy just because i homeserve …
You guys are monitoring your servers?
“can’t access this thing, server must be down”
I’ll fix it when I get home
They’re in my attached garage. In the living room when it’s quiet I can hear them humming. Does that count?
“Oh the fans ramped up, something must be going down”
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.
Use service, wait for 404 or data loss…
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]
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
Beszel, uptime kuma, wazuh
I notice something stopped working, or someone in the household notices.
Then I go fix it.
And the best time to notice that the backups weren’t working is when you need access to the backup. 😅
Backups? In this economy?
But I need to get something working. I am about to move to VaultWarden and that makes me very nervous.
I run a vaultwarden container since forever and it’s really smooth. All updates went through just fine, never had an issue with it.
That’s the neat part, I don’t.
Whining from end users.
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 thingsps -ef | grep <whatever you're looking for>for investigating stuck/hung/zombie processesdmsegtail -f /var/log(or whatever log file you care about)netstatfor net statistics (i think ntop used to be a thing but idk anymore>…)df -hto look at disk usagethose are all that come to mind right away.
EDIT: formatting and quick explanation of what each tool does
Uptime Kuma! For HDDs I have them report their “ping” as percentage full
Can you teach me this wizardry?
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)
Uptime Kuma, only really care if it’s up or not. Got about 30 services monitored, sending notifications to Signal.
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
https://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:

Looks like i don’t have to expose ports or anything like that, right?
Nope, your uptime kuma speaks to it directly, and it basically acts as a signal client for you.
Edit: ah, i see! It’s kuma that allows you to i guess by adding new device on phone Signal









