healthchecks is a watchdog for your cron jobs. It's a web server that listens for pings from your cron jobs, plus a web interface.
It is live here: http://healthchecks.io/
The building blocks are:
- Python 3
- Django 2
- PostgreSQL or MySQL
These are instructions for setting up healthchecks Django app in development environment.
-
install dependencies (Debian/Ubuntu)
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install -y gcc python3-dev python3-venv
-
prepare directory for project code and virtualenv:
$ mkdir -p ~/webapps $ cd ~/webapps
-
prepare virtual environment (with virtualenv you get pip, we'll use it soon to install requirements):
$ python3 -m venv hc-venv $ source hc-venv/bin/activate
-
check out project code:
$ git clone https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks.git
-
install requirements (Django, ...) into virtualenv:
$ pip install -r healthchecks/requirements.txt
-
healthchecks is configured to use a SQLite database by default. To use PostgreSQL or MySQL database, create and edit
hc/local_settings.py
file. There is a template you can copy and edit as needed:$ cd ~/webapps/healthchecks $ cp hc/local_settings.py.example hc/local_settings.py
-
create database tables and the superuser account:
$ cd ~/webapps/healthchecks $ ./manage.py migrate $ ./manage.py createsuperuser
-
run development server:
$ ./manage.py runserver
The site should now be running at http://localhost:8080
To log into Django administration site as a super user,
visit http://localhost:8080/admin
Site configuration is loaded from environment variables. This is
done in hc/settings.py
. Additional configuration is loaded
from hc/local_settings.py
file, if it exists. You can create this file
(should be right next to settings.py
in the filesystem) and override
settings, or add extra settings as needed.
Configurations settings loaded from environment variables:
Environment variable | Default value | Notes |
---|---|---|
SECRET_KEY | "---" |
|
DEBUG | True |
Set to False for production |
ALLOWED_HOSTS | * |
Separate multiple hosts with commas |
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL | "healthchecks@example.org" |
|
USE_PAYMENTS | False |
|
REGISTRATION_OPEN | True |
|
DB | "sqlite" |
Set to "postgres" or "mysql" |
DB_HOST | "" (empty string) |
|
DB_PORT | "" (empty string) |
|
DB_NAME | "hc" (PostgreSQL, MySQL) or "/path/to/project/hc.sqlite" (SQLite) |
For SQLite, specify the full path to the database file. |
DB_USER | "postgres" or "root" |
|
DB_PASSWORD | "" (empty string) |
|
DB_CONN_MAX_AGE | 0 |
|
DB_SSLMODE | "prefer" |
PostgreSQL-specific, details |
DB_TARGET_SESSION_ATTRS | "read-write" |
PostgreSQL-specific, details |
EMAIL_HOST | "" (empty string) |
|
EMAIL_PORT | "587" |
|
EMAIL_HOST_USER | "" (empty string) |
|
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD | "" (empty string) |
|
EMAIL_USE_TLS | "True" |
|
EMAIL_USE_VERIFICATION | "True" |
|
SITE_ROOT | "http://localhost:8000" |
|
SITE_NAME | "Mychecks" |
|
MASTER_BADGE_LABEL | "Mychecks" |
|
PING_ENDPOINT | "http://localhost:8000/ping/" |
|
PING_EMAIL_DOMAIN | "localhost" |
|
DISCORD_CLIENT_ID | None |
|
DISCORD_CLIENT_SECRET | None |
|
SLACK_CLIENT_ID | None |
|
SLACK_CLIENT_SECRET | None |
|
PUSHOVER_API_TOKEN | None |
|
PUSHOVER_SUBSCRIPTION_URL | None |
|
PUSHOVER_EMERGENCY_RETRY_DELAY | 300 |
|
PUSHOVER_EMERGENCY_EXPIRATION | 86400 |
|
PUSHBULLET_CLIENT_ID | None |
|
PUSHBULLET_CLIENT_SECRET | None |
|
TELEGRAM_BOT_NAME | "ExampleBot" |
|
TELEGRAM_TOKEN | None |
|
TWILIO_ACCOUNT | None |
|
TWILIO_AUTH | None |
|
TWILIO_FROM | None |
|
TWILIO_USE_WHATSAPP | "False" |
|
PD_VENDOR_KEY | None |
|
TRELLO_APP_KEY | None |
|
MATRIX_HOMESERVER | None |
|
MATRIX_USER_ID | None |
|
MATRIX_ACCESS_TOKEN | None |
Some useful settings keys to override are:
SITE_ROOT
is used to build fully qualified URLs for pings, and for use in
emails and notifications. Example:
SITE_ROOT = "https://my-monitoring-project.com"
SITE_NAME
has the default value of "Mychecks" and is used throughout
the templates. Replace it with your own name to personalize your installation.
Example:
SITE_NAME = "My Monitoring Project"
REGISTRATION_OPEN
controls whether site visitors can create new accounts.
Set it to False
if you are setting up a private healthchecks instance, but
it needs to be publicly accessible (so, for example, your cloud services
can send pings).
If you close new user registration, you can still selectively invite users to your team account.
EMAIL_USE_VERIFICATION
enables/disables the sending of a verification
link when an email address is added to the list of notification methods.
Set it to False
if you are setting up a private healthchecks instance where
you trust your users and want to avoid the extra verification step.
Database configuration is loaded from environment variables. If you
need to use a non-standard configuration, you can override the
database configuration in hc/local_settings.py
like so:
DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
'NAME': 'your-database-name-here',
'USER': 'your-database-user-here',
'PASSWORD': 'your-database-password-here',
'TEST': {'CHARSET': 'UTF8'},
'OPTIONS': {
... your custom options here ...
}
}
}
healthchecks must be able to send email messages, so it can send out login
links and alerts to users. Environment variables can be used to configure
SMTP settings, or your may put your SMTP server configuration in
hc/local_settings.py
like so:
EMAIL_HOST = "your-smtp-server-here.com"
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = "username"
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = "password"
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
For more information, have a look at Django documentation, Sending Email section.
healthchecks comes with a smtpd
management command, which starts up a
SMTP listener service. With the command running, you can ping your
checks by sending email messages
to your-uuid-here@my-monitoring-project.com
email addresses.
Start the SMTP listener on port 2525:
$ ./manage.py smtpd --port 2525
Send a test email:
$ curl --url 'smtp://127.0.0.1:2525' \
--mail-from 'foo@example.org' \
--mail-rcpt '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111@my-monitoring-project.com' \
-F '='
healtchecks comes with a sendalerts
management command, which continuously
polls database for any checks changing state, and sends out notifications as
needed. Within an activated virtualenv, you can manually run
the sendalerts
command like so:
$ ./manage.py sendalerts
In a production setup, you will want to run this command from a process manager like supervisor or systemd.
With time and use the healthchecks database will grow in size. You may decide to prune old data: inactive user accounts, old checks not assigned to users, records of outgoing email messages and records of received pings. There are separate Django management commands for each task:
-
Remove old records from
api_ping
table. For each check, keep 100 most recent pings:$ ./manage.py prunepings
-
Remove old records of sent notifications. For each check, remove notifications that are older than the oldest stored ping for same check.
$ ./manage.py prunenotifications
-
Remove user accounts that match either of these conditions:
-
Account was created more than 6 months ago, and user has never logged in. These can happen when user enters invalid email address when signing up.
-
Last login was more than 6 months ago, and the account has no checks. Assume the user doesn't intend to use the account any more and would probably want it removed.
$ ./manage.py pruneusers
-
-
Remove old records fromt he
api_tokenbucket
table. The TokenBucket model is used for rate-limiting login attempts and similar operations. Any records older than one day can be safely removed.$ ./manage.py prunetokenbucket
When you first try these commands on your data, it is a good idea to test them on a copy of your database, not on the live database right away. In a production setup, you should also have regular, automated database backups set up.
To enable Discord integration, you will need to:
- register a new application on https://discordapp.com/developers/applications/me
- add a redirect URI to your Discord application. The URI format is
SITE_ROOT/integrations/add_discord/
. For example, if you are running a development server onlocalhost:8000
then the redirect URI would behttp://localhost:8000/integrations/add_discord/
- Look up your Discord app's Client ID and Client Secret. Put them
in
DISCORD_CLIENT_ID
andDISCORD_CLIENT_SECRET
environment variables.
To enable Pushover integration, you will need to:
- register a new application on https://pushover.net/apps/build
- enable subscriptions in your application and make sure to enable the URL subscription type
- put the application token and the subscription URL in
PUSHOVER_API_TOKEN
andPUSHOVER_SUBSCRIPTION_URL
environment variables
-
Create a Telegram bot by talking to the BotFather. Set the bot's name, description, user picture, and add a "/start" command.
-
After creating the bot you will have the bot's name and token. Put them in
TELEGRAM_BOT_NAME
andTELEGRAM_TOKEN
environment variables. -
Run
settelegramwebhook
management command. This command tells Telegram where to forward channel messages by invoking Telegram's setWebhook API call:$ ./manage.py settelegramwebhook Done, Telegram's webhook set to: https://my-monitoring-project.com/integrations/telegram/bot/
For this to work, your SITE_ROOT
needs to be correct and use "https://"
scheme.