Published: May 8, 2025 by Isaac Johnson

Today we are going to revisit a couple of Open-Source suites - namely Vikunja and Glance. Both of which I use, albeit Vikunja nearly daily.

We’ll also look at Smokeping, a simple Open-source Network monitor that is easy to fire up in Docker or Kubernetes. I’ll cover both as well as how to add one’s own sites to it. Lastly, I’ll wrap by showing how Smokeping fits in with my existing Monitoring strategies.

Vikunja

I wanted to post a follow-up on Vikunja Task Management from my February writeup.

I’ve been using Vikunja now, almost exclusively, for tracking app ideas and blog posts for the last 3 months.

I have a board, but I don’t use it too much, but it is there for tracking status

Most of the time I fire it up on my phone and the mobile interface works great.

I won’t re-write the same article, but I do recommend it if looking for a task management tool - especially if looking for non-US based ones.

Glance

I came across this XDA post about Glance while eating breakfast this morning.

It looks like a really solid landing page that is easy to self-host. As it looked familiar, I searched back and found indeed, I did cover this in June of 2024 and still have it running.

However, there have been plenty of updates since, so let’s upgrade my 0.6.2 version to the latest 0.7.13 and see what is new.

At this moment, Glance 0.6.2 looks like:

The Readme still lacks Kubernetes so we can just update the existing deployment.

It is still there nearly a full year later

$ kubectl get deployments -A | grep -i glance
default                 glance-deployment                   1/1     1            1           347d

Since I never specified a tag in the deployment

$ kubectl get deployment glance-deployment -o yaml | grep -C 2 image:
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: glanceapp/glance
        imagePullPolicy: Always
        name: glance

I should be able to just rotate the pod to “upgrade”

$ kubectl get po -l app=glance
NAME                                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
glance-deployment-5547d948ff-w5xg6   1/1     Running   0          177d
$ kubectl delete po -l app=glance
pod "glance-deployment-5547d948ff-w5xg6" deleted
$ kubectl get po -l app=glance
NAME                                 READY   STATUS   RESTARTS   AGE
glance-deployment-5547d948ff-rjwj5   0/1     Error    0          5s
$ kubectl get po -l app=glance
NAME                                 READY   STATUS             RESTARTS     AGE
glance-deployment-5547d948ff-rjwj5   0/1     CrashLoopBackOff   1 (3s ago)   7s

Uh-oh, looks like we have an issue

$ kubectl logs glance-deployment-5547d948ff-rjwj5
parsing config: reading main YAML file: open /app/config/glance.yml: no such file or directory

I’m guessing that is because the original volume mount was just /app/glance.yaml

          volumeMounts:
            - name: config-volume
              mountPath: /app/glance.yml
              subPath: glance.yml

I did a quick inline edit to fix:

$ kubectl edit deployment glance-deployment
deployment.apps/glance-deployment edited
$ kubectl get deployment glance-deployment -o yaml | grep -C 2 glance.yml
    deployment.kubernetes.io/revision: "4"
    kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration: |
      {"apiVersion":"apps/v1","kind":"Deployment","metadata":{"annotations":{},"name":"glance-deployment","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"replicas":1,"selector":{"matchLabels":{"app":"glance"}},"template":{"metadata":{"labels":{"app":"glance"}},"spec":{"containers":[{"image":"glanceapp/glance","name":"glance","ports":[{"containerPort":8080}],"volumeMounts":[{"mountPath":"/app/glance.yml","name":"config-volume","subPath":"glance.yml"}]}],"volumes":[{"configMap":{"name":"glanceconfig"},"name":"config-volume"}]}}}}
  creationTimestamp: "2024-05-23T00:31:41Z"
  generation: 4
--
        terminationMessagePolicy: File
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /app/config/glance.yml
          name: config-volume
          subPath: glance.yml
      dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
      restartPolicy: Always

And it came right up

$ kubectl get po -l app=glance
NAME                                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
glance-deployment-5fdc699b86-nm42f   1/1     Running   0          6s

That said, I don’t see much difference

That said, there are a lot of updates in the release notes including the availability of community widgets.

I had to try it. I added a Minecraft Server Monitor for my FTB server

I noticed the icon URL in the JSON return payload was empty

Offline works fine (if I change ports)

I created a better SVG with Copilot that sort of looks like a Minecraft dirt block.

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" style="width:32px; height:32px;">
  <!-- Right side face (darker) -->
  <polygon points="17,3 17,17 10,19 10,5" fill="#5C3721"/>
  
  <!-- Left side face (medium) -->
  <polygon points="3,3 3,17 10,19 10,5" fill="#734A2D"/>
  
  <!-- Top face (lightest) -->
  <polygon points="3,3 10,5 17,3 10,1" fill="#229954"/>
  
  <!-- Texture dots (darker spots) -->
  <circle cx="5" cy="4" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  <circle cx="12" cy="2.5" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  <circle cx="8" cy="3.5" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  <circle cx="15" cy="4" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  
  <!-- Side texture dots -->
  <circle cx="5" cy="8" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  <circle cx="7" cy="12" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  <circle cx="4" cy="15" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  <circle cx="13" cy="7" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
  <circle cx="15" cy="13" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
</svg>

You are welcome to use the SVG from the Online block below. e.g.

              - type: custom-api
                title: Minecraft
                url: https://api.mcstatus.io/v2/status/java/75.73.224.240:12345
                cache: 30s
                template: |
                  <div style="display:flex; align-items:center; gap:12px;">
                    <div style="width:40px; height:40px; flex-shrink:0;  border-radius:4px; display:flex; justify-content:center; align-items:center; overflow:hidden;">
                      {{ if .JSON.Bool "online" }}
                        <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" style="width:32px; height:32px;">
                          <!-- Right side face (darker) -->
                          <polygon points="17,3 17,17 10,19 10,5" fill="#5C3721"/>

                          <!-- Left side face (medium) -->
                          <polygon points="3,3 3,17 10,19 10,5" fill="#734A2D"/>

                          <!-- Top face (lightest) -->
                          <polygon points="3,3 10,5 17,3 10,1" fill="#229954"/>

                          <!-- Texture dots (darker spots) -->
                          <circle cx="5" cy="4" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                          <circle cx="12" cy="2.5" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                          <circle cx="8" cy="3.5" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                          <circle cx="15" cy="4" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>

                          <!-- Side texture dots -->
                          <circle cx="5" cy="8" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                          <circle cx="7" cy="12" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                          <circle cx="4" cy="15" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                          <circle cx="13" cy="7" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                          <circle cx="15" cy="13" r="0.8" fill="#4A2810"/>
                        </svg>
                      {{ else }}
                        <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="currentColor" style="width:32px; height:32px; opacity:0.5;">
                          <path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M1 5.25A2.25 2.25 0 0 1 3.25 3h13.5A2.25 2.25 0 0 1 19 5.25v9.5A2.25 2.25 0 0 1 16.75 17H3.25A2.25 2.25 0 0 1 1 14.75v-9.5Zm1.5 5.81v3.69c0 .414.336.75.75.75h13.5a.75.75 0 0 0 .75-.75v-2.69l-2.22-2.219a.75.75 0 0 0-1.06 0l-1.91 1.909.47.47a.75.75 0 1 1-1.06 1.06L6.53 8.091a.75.75 0 0 0-1.06 0l-2.97 2.97ZM12 7a1 1 0 1 1-2 0 1 1 0 0 1 2 0Z" clip-rule="evenodd" />
                        </svg>
                      {{ end }}
                    </div>
                    ... snip ...

Smokeping

Recently I saw an article on Marius Hosting about Smokeping.

Smokeping from Linuxserver group

Let’s start with a basic docker compose run:

$ mkdir /tmp/smokeconfig
$ mkdir /tmp/smokedata
$ !v
vi docker-compose.yaml
$ cat ./docker-compose.yaml
---
services:
  smokeping:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/smokeping:latest
    container_name: smokeping
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - SHARED_SECRET=password #optional
    volumes:
      - /tmp/smokeconfig:/config
      - /tmp/smokedata:/data
    ports:
      - 8099:80
    restart: unless-stopped

Now we can compose up

$ docker compose up
[+] Running 9/9
 ✔ smokeping Pulled                                                                                                                                        12.9s
   ✔ 88f52c619a3d Pull complete                                                                                                                             1.6s
   ✔ e1cde46db0e1 Pull complete                                                                                                                             1.6s
   ✔ c32d061e9a23 Pull complete                                                                                                                             1.7s
   ✔ 1bf67c2a6cde Pull complete                                                                                                                             1.7s
   ✔ 2cf302d3aa0f Pull complete                                                                                                                             2.5s
   ✔ 28623f5332b1 Pull complete                                                                                                                             2.6s
   ✔ 73125ea7fbc2 Pull complete                                                                                                                            10.8s
   ✔ c1347cfb876d Pull complete                                                                                                                            10.8s
[+] Running 2/2
 ✔ Network jekyll-blog_default  Created                                                                                                                     0.1s
 ✔ Container smokeping          Created                                                                                                                     0.3s
Attaching to smokeping
smokeping  | [migrations] started
smokeping  | [migrations] no migrations found
smokeping  | ───────────────────────────────────────
smokeping  |
smokeping  |       ██╗     ███████╗██╗ ██████╗
smokeping  |       ██║     ██╔════╝██║██╔═══██╗
smokeping  |       ██║     ███████╗██║██║   ██║
smokeping  |       ██║     ╚════██║██║██║   ██║
smokeping  |       ███████╗███████║██║╚██████╔╝
smokeping  |       ╚══════╝╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═════╝
smokeping  |
smokeping  |    Brought to you by linuxserver.io
smokeping  | ───────────────────────────────────────
smokeping  |
smokeping  | To support LSIO projects visit:
smokeping  | https://www.linuxserver.io/donate/
smokeping  |
smokeping  | ───────────────────────────────────────
smokeping  | GID/UID
smokeping  | ───────────────────────────────────────
smokeping  |
smokeping  | User UID:    1000
smokeping  | User GID:    1000
smokeping  | ───────────────────────────────────────
smokeping  | Linuxserver.io version: 2.8.2-r3-ls130
smokeping  | Build-date: 2025-04-22T20:40:37+00:00
smokeping  | ───────────────────────────────────────
smokeping  |
smokeping  | 'Alerts' -> '/config/Alerts'
smokeping  | 'Database' -> '/config/Database'
smokeping  | 'General' -> '/config/General'
smokeping  | 'Presentation' -> '/config/Presentation'
smokeping  | 'Probes' -> '/config/Probes'
smokeping  | 'Slaves' -> '/config/Slaves'
smokeping  | 'Targets' -> '/config/Targets'
smokeping  | 'pathnames' -> '/config/pathnames'
smokeping  | 'ssmtp.conf' -> '/config/ssmtp.conf'
smokeping  | [custom-init] No custom files found, skipping...
smokeping  | AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 172.23.0.2. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
smokeping  | Connection to localhost (::1) 80 port [tcp/http] succeeded!
smokeping  | [ls.io-init] done.
smokeping  | WARNING: Hostname 'ipv6.google.com' does currently not resolve to an IPv4 address
smokeping  | ### parsing dig output...OK
smokeping  | Smokeping version 2.008002 successfully launched.
smokeping  | Entering multiprocess mode.
smokeping  | ### assuming you are using an tcpping copy reporting in milliseconds
smokeping  | Child process 274 started for probe FPing6.
smokeping  | No targets defined for probe TCPPing, skipping.
smokeping  | FPing6: probing 1 targets with step 300 s and offset 255 s.
smokeping  | Child process 275 started for probe DNS.
smokeping  | DNS: probing 9 targets with step 300 s and offset 295 s.
smokeping  | Child process 276 started for probe FPing.
smokeping  | All probe processes started successfully.
smokeping  | FPing: probing 25 targets with step 300 s and offset 298 s.

I can now see Smokeping on port 8099 (nothing magic there, I just wanted a local available port)

However, I did not see any data load

And all the internet sites remained flat

Docker host

Let’s try on my dedicated Docker host

builder@builder-T100:~$ mkdir smokeping
builder@builder-T100:~$ mkdir smokeping/data
builder@builder-T100:~$ mkdir smokeping/config

# just to make sure it isnt container user access issues
builder@builder-T100:~$ chmod 777 smokeping/data
builder@builder-T100:~$ chmod 777 smokeping/config

# run
builder@builder-T100:~$ docker run -d \
  --name=smokeping \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Etc/UTC \
  -p 8099:80 \
  -v /home/builder/smokeping/config:/config \
  -v /home/builder/smokeping/data:/data \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/smokeping:latest
Unable to find image 'lscr.io/linuxserver/smokeping:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from linuxserver/smokeping
88f52c619a3d: Pull complete
e1cde46db0e1: Pull complete
c32d061e9a23: Pull complete
1bf67c2a6cde: Pull complete
2cf302d3aa0f: Pull complete
28623f5332b1: Pull complete
73125ea7fbc2: Pull complete
c1347cfb876d: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:55d87021ff7a66575029d324d6cb5116d37ee7815637a29282b894a8336201a6
Status: Downloaded newer image for lscr.io/linuxserver/smokeping:latest
f3989c434dbd80bf8c67c68c54d4fb9a61ce0b5c72f44ed1f996ccb3d0eeaa86

I can see graphs now but no data.

The logs look fine:

builder@builder-T100:~$ docker logs smokeping
[migrations] started
[migrations] no migrations found
───────────────────────────────────────

      ██╗     ███████╗██╗ ██████╗
      ██║     ██╔════╝██║██╔═══██╗
      ██║     ███████╗██║██║   ██║
      ██║     ╚════██║██║██║   ██║
      ███████╗███████║██║╚██████╔╝
      ╚══════╝╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═════╝

   Brought to you by linuxserver.io
───────────────────────────────────────

To support LSIO projects visit:
https://www.linuxserver.io/donate/

───────────────────────────────────────
GID/UID
───────────────────────────────────────

User UID:    1000
User GID:    1000
───────────────────────────────────────
Linuxserver.io version: 2.8.2-r3-ls130
Build-date: 2025-04-22T20:40:37+00:00
───────────────────────────────────────

'Alerts' -> '/config/Alerts'
'Database' -> '/config/Database'
'General' -> '/config/General'
'Presentation' -> '/config/Presentation'
'Probes' -> '/config/Probes'
'Slaves' -> '/config/Slaves'
'Targets' -> '/config/Targets'
'pathnames' -> '/config/pathnames'
'ssmtp.conf' -> '/config/ssmtp.conf'
[custom-init] No custom files found, skipping...
AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 172.17.0.15. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
Connection to localhost (127.0.0.1) 80 port [tcp/http] succeeded!
[ls.io-init] done.
WARNING: Hostname 'ipv6.google.com' does currently not resolve to an IPv4 address
### parsing dig output...OK
### assuming you are using an fping copy reporting in milliseconds
Smokeping version 2.008002 successfully launched.
Entering multiprocess mode.
No targets defined for probe TCPPing, skipping.
### assuming you are using an tcpping copy reporting in milliseconds
Child process 272 started for probe DNS.
DNS: probing 9 targets with step 300 s and offset 185 s.
Child process 273 started for probe FPing6.
FPing6: probing 1 targets with step 300 s and offset 150 s.
Child process 274 started for probe FPing.
All probe processes started successfully.
FPing: probing 25 targets with step 300 s and offset 58 s.

And I can see data in the mounted volumes

builder@builder-T100:~$ ls -ltra smokeping/data/
total 28
drwxrwxr-x 4 builder builder 4096 May  5 12:41 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 builder builder 4096 May  5 12:44 DNS
drwxr-xr-x 2 builder builder 4096 May  5 12:44 USA
drwxr-xr-x 5 builder builder 4096 May  5 12:44 Europe
drwxr-xr-x 2 builder builder 4096 May  5 12:44 DNSProbes
drwxrwxrwx 7 builder builder 4096 May  5 12:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 2 builder builder 4096 May  5 12:44 InternetSites
builder@builder-T100:~$ ls -ltra smokeping/config/
total 72
drwxrwxr-x 4 builder builder  4096 May  5 12:41 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   177 May  5 12:44 Alerts
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   237 May  5 12:44 Database
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   486 May  5 12:44 General
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   875 May  5 12:44 Presentation
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   251 May  5 12:44 Probes
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   147 May  5 12:44 Slaves
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder  3390 May  5 12:44 Targets
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   188 May  5 12:44 pathnames
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder   613 May  5 12:44 ssmtp.conf
drwxr-xr-x 2 builder builder  4096 May  5 12:44 site-confs
-rw-r--r-- 1 builder builder 17460 May  5 12:44 httpd.conf
-rwxr-x--- 1 builder builder    57 May  5 12:44 smokeping_secrets
drwxrwxrwx 3 builder builder  4096 May  5 12:44 .

That was when I realized that I just lacked patience.

Coming back about 15 minutes later I could see graphs starting

Kubernetes

I’ll try one more way and that is with Kubernetes

Converting this to a manifest:

$ cat ./smokeping.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: smokeping-config
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  storageClassName: local-path
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: smokeping-data
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  storageClassName: local-path
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 5Gi
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: smokeping
  labels:
    app: smokeping
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: smokeping
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: smokeping
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: smokeping
        image: lscr.io/linuxserver/smokeping:latest
        env:
        - name: PUID
          value: "1000"
        - name: PGID
          value: "1000"
        - name: TZ
          value: "America/Chicago"
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          name: http
        volumeMounts:
        - name: config
          mountPath: /config
        - name: data
          mountPath: /data
        resources:
          requests:
            memory: "256Mi"
            cpu: "100m"
          limits:
            memory: "512Mi"
            cpu: "500m"
      volumes:
      - name: config
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: smokeping-config
      - name: data
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: smokeping-data
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: smokeping
spec:
  selector:
    app: smokeping
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
    name: http
  type: ClusterIP

Then apply

$ kubectl apply -f ./smokeping.yaml
persistentvolumeclaim/smokeping-config created
persistentvolumeclaim/smokeping-data created
deployment.apps/smokeping created
service/smokeping created

I can see the pod is up and running

$ kubectl logs smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4
[migrations] started
[migrations] no migrations found
───────────────────────────────────────

      ██╗     ███████╗██╗ ██████╗
      ██║     ██╔════╝██║██╔═══██╗
      ██║     ███████╗██║██║   ██║
      ██║     ╚════██║██║██║   ██║
      ███████╗███████║██║╚██████╔╝
      ╚══════╝╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═════╝

   Brought to you by linuxserver.io
───────────────────────────────────────

To support LSIO projects visit:
https://www.linuxserver.io/donate/

───────────────────────────────────────
GID/UID
───────────────────────────────────────

User UID:    1000
User GID:    1000
───────────────────────────────────────
Linuxserver.io version: 2.8.2-r3-ls130
Build-date: 2025-04-22T20:40:37+00:00
───────────────────────────────────────

'Alerts' -> '/config/Alerts'
'Database' -> '/config/Database'
'General' -> '/config/General'
'Presentation' -> '/config/Presentation'
'Probes' -> '/config/Probes'
'Slaves' -> '/config/Slaves'
'Targets' -> '/config/Targets'
'pathnames' -> '/config/pathnames'
'ssmtp.conf' -> '/config/ssmtp.conf'
[custom-init] No custom files found, skipping...
AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 10.42.1.119. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
Connection to localhost (::1) 80 port [tcp/http] succeeded!
[ls.io-init] done.
WARNING: Hostname 'ipv6.google.com' does currently not resolve to an IPv4 address
### parsing dig output...OK
### assuming you are using an tcpping copy reporting in milliseconds
Smokeping version 2.008002 successfully launched.
Entering multiprocess mode.
Child process 275 started for probe FPing6.
No targets defined for probe TCPPing, skipping.
FPing6: probing 1 targets with step 300 s and offset 77 s.
Child process 276 started for probe FPing.
FPing: probing 25 targets with step 300 s and offset 129 s.
Child process 277 started for probe DNS.
All probe processes started successfully.
DNS: probing 9 targets with step 300 s and offset 252 s.

I’ll want to check this remotely so let’s add an ingress with an A Record

$ az account set --subscription "Pay-As-You-Go" && az network dns record-set a add-record -g idjdnsrg -z tpk.pw -a 75.73.224.240 -n smokeping
{
  "ARecords": [
    {
      "ipv4Address": "75.73.224.240"
    }
  ],
  "TTL": 3600,
  "etag": "ddd74614-d3a2-4e7c-9716-0869aa23d27c",
  "fqdn": "smokeping.tpk.pw.",
  "id": "/subscriptions/d955c0ba-13dc-44cf-a29a-8fed74cbb22d/resourceGroups/idjdnsrg/providers/Microsoft.Network/dnszones/tpk.pw/A/smokeping",
  "name": "smokeping",
  "provisioningState": "Succeeded",
  "resourceGroup": "idjdnsrg",
  "targetResource": {},
  "trafficManagementProfile": {},
  "type": "Microsoft.Network/dnszones/A"
}

I can then add the block to the Kubernetes YAML manifest

---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: azuredns-tpkpw
    ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-redirect: "true"
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx
    kubernetes.io/tls-acme: "true"
    nginx.org/websocket-services: smokeping
  name: smokepingingress
spec:
  rules:
  - host: smokeping.tpk.pw
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          service:
            name: smokeping
            port:
              number: 80
        path: /
        pathType: ImplementationSpecific
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - smokeping.tpk.pw
    secretName: smokeping-tls

and apply

$ kubectl apply -f ./smokeping.yaml
persistentvolumeclaim/smokeping-config unchanged
persistentvolumeclaim/smokeping-data unchanged
deployment.apps/smokeping unchanged
service/smokeping unchanged
ingress.networking.k8s.io/smokepingingress created

Once I saw the cert was ready

$ kubectl get cert smokeping-tls
NAME            READY   SECRET          AGE
smokeping-tls   True    smokeping-tls   96s

I could test the URL, smokeping.tpk.pw

It didn’t take long to see some good data in the graphs, such as Pings to the UK

Adding sites

We could recompile to add sites to the Conf Target file

Or just get a shell to the container and modify them as they live on the PVC

builder@DESKTOP-QADGF36:~/Workspaces/jekyll-blog$ kubectl get po | grep smoke
smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4                           1/1     Running     0                 126m
builder@DESKTOP-QADGF36:~/Workspaces/jekyll-blog$ kubectl exec -it smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4 -- /bin/bash
root@smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4:/# pwd
/
root@smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4:/# ls
app  build_version  config  defaults  docker-mods  home  lib     media  opt      proc  run   srv  tmp  var
bin  command        data    dev       etc          init  lsiopy  mnt    package  root  sbin  sys  usr
root@smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4:/# cd /config
root@smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4:/config# cat Targets
*** Targets ***

probe = FPing

menu = Top
title = Network Latency Grapher
remark = Welcome to the SmokePing website of WORKS Company. \
         Here you will learn all about the latency of our network.

+ InternetSites

menu = Internet Sites
title = Internet Sites

++ Facebook
menu = Facebook
title = Facebook
host = facebook.com

Here I’ll add one of the Targets

root@smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4:/config# ls -ltra
total 72
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   4096 May  5 12:51 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   177 May  5 12:51 Alerts
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   237 May  5 12:51 Database
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   486 May  5 12:51 General
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   875 May  5 12:51 Presentation
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   251 May  5 12:51 Probes
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   147 May  5 12:51 Slaves
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users  3390 May  5 12:51 Targets
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   188 May  5 12:51 pathnames
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users   613 May  5 12:51 ssmtp.conf
drwxr-xr-x 2 abc  users  4096 May  5 12:51 site-confs
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc  users 17460 May  5 12:51 httpd.conf
-rwxr-x--- 1 abc  users    57 May  5 12:51 smokeping_secrets
drwxrwxrwx 3 abc  users  4096 May  5 12:51 .
root@smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4:/config# vi Targets

Then add my lines

+ InternetSites

menu = Internet Sites
title = Internet Sites

++ Facebook
menu = Facebook
title = Facebook
host = facebook.com

++ Youtube
menu = YouTube
title = YouTube
host = youtube.com

++ JupiterBroadcasting
menu = JupiterBroadcasting
title = JupiterBroadcasting
host = jupiterbroadcasting.com

++ GoogleSearch
menu = Google
title = google.com
host = google.com

++ GoogleSearchIpv6
menu = Google
probe = FPing6
title = ipv6.google.com
host = ipv6.google.com

++ linuxserverio
menu = linuxserver.io
title = linuxserver.io
host = linuxserver.io

++ Freshbrewed
menu = freshbrewed.science
title = freshbrewed.science
host = freshbrewed.science

+ Europe

As it’s a cgi, I’ll rotate the pod to ensure it takes effect

$ kubectl delete po smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4
pod "smokeping-594bc499b8-nchx4" deleted
$ kubectl get po | grep smoke
smokeping-594bc499b8-jwqkz                           1/1     Running     0                 18s

I can now see my own site listed in the Internet sites

Where I could really see this handy is adding a new section for all of ones exposed sites and monitoring so you can see if there is any latency at night.

Other ways to monitor

I would still use Uptime Kuma to monitor and send alerts:

But it would be nice to have a simple external app, perhaps in Cloud Run, just chugging along and showing when I’m down (or if I had a network blip at night).

One of my issues with Uptime Kuma is that it really just monitors in my network.

For an “external check”, today I rely on Datadog to alert when a host monitor goes down

And if I wanted something more complicated or not requiring an Agent, I could use Synthetic Monitoring to get the job done

I use Synthetic Monitoring in New Relic as well which is pretty easy to configure

With New Relic, you simply write some Selenium to get the job done (e.g. testing if https://patientsmvc.steeped.space/Patients responds with a payload including an H1 tag):

Summary

Today we revisited two Open-Source tools, Vikunja and Glance. I covered how I use Vikunja as my primary task manager and find it quite useful in tracking blog ideas, though I rarely use the other features. We upgraded Glance and checked out the Minecraft server plugin (as way to see how to use Community Plugins).

I then moved on to cover Smokeping, a simple, but very handy Open-source containerized tool for monitoring endpoints over time. I showed how to deploy it to Kubernetes and then update it to add new sites (my manually updating the config in the PVC). Lastly, I showed a few other ways I monitor systems including Uptime Kuma, Datadog and New Relic.

You’re welcome to see the hosted versions of Glance and Smokeping: