# uptimekuma — the fleet's SERVICE-layer monitor (ana-docker)

`louislam/uptime-kuma:2.5.5` on **ana-docker** (`10.250.50.70:3001`), beside the
Beszel and Dozzle hubs.

## Why it exists — the lane split

Measured 2026-09-21, after the fleet dashboard sat dead for three days while
every monitoring tool reported correctly:

| tool | what it asks | scope |
|---|---|---|
| **Beszel** | is the box alive, and is it out of CPU / memory / disk / heat | 18 hosts × {Status, CPU, Memory, Disk, Temperature} |
| **Uptime Kuma** (this) | **is the service actually serving** | the fleet's user-facing endpoints |
| **Homepage** | — | **DISPLAY ONLY.** Polls 38 URLs, alerts nobody. |

Beszel and Kuma are **not redundant** — they are disjoint, and the seam between
them is where things die quietly. Beszel's alerts bind to a *system* with a
threshold (`alerts` table: `system, name, value, min`); there is **no URL
column**, so it is structurally incapable of "this endpoint should return 200".
That is not a configuration gap, it is the data model.

On 2026-09-18 `homepage` wedged in an unkillable D-state. Beszel reported
`esh-vm-docker: up` — correctly; the host *was* up. Kuma was not watching it.
The dead dashboard fell between two working instruments and stayed dark for
three days until the operator hit a 404.

## Rebuilt from scratch, 2026-09-21

Operator-authorised: *"uptime-kuma was never really used… you can even dump the
existing container and config and start over from scratch."* The prior instance
had four monitors — three firewall pings and one HTTPS check — and nothing was
migrated. This also skipped the one-way v1→v2 database migration entirely.

Two things changed with the rebuild:

**Pinned to `2.5.5`, and `:latest` is now a documented trap.** Upstream keeps
`latest` on the **1.x** line: an August 2026 pull produced an image *built
2024-12-20* running 1.23.16. Verified by digest — `latest` and `1` resolve to
the same image, while `2`/`next` carry 2.5.5. 2.x has been stable since 2.2.0
(2026-03-05), twelve releases, zero prereleases. Pinned exactly rather than
floating on `2`, for the same reason `latest` burned us.

**Moved esh-docker-vm → ana-docker.** House placement rule (CLAUDE.md): *cross-
site services live on ana-docker and pull from agents on the other hosts* — a
fleet-wide service monitor is exactly that. And `esh-docker-vm` has wedged
unkillably twice in four months (2026-06-03, 2026-09-18), so it is the worst
box in the fleet to host the thing that would tell us. A monitor also cannot
report the failure of the host it runs on; Beszel covers that layer, and the
two should not share a failure domain.

Normalised at the same time: `restart: always` → `unless-stopped`, which the
2026-08-18 README flagged as *"worth normalising on the next deliberate touch"*.
`always` revives a container that was stopped on purpose.

## Scripting it

**There is no REST CRUD API — in either major version.** Checked against the
2.5.5 source tree, not the docs: `server/routers/` contains exactly two files,
`api-router.js` (Prometheus `/metrics`, badges, entry page) and
`status-page-router.js`. API keys unlock `/metrics` and badges only.

Automation goes over **Socket.IO**, the same channel the web UI uses;
`server/socket-handlers/general-socket-handler.js` carries `add`,
`editMonitor`, `deleteMonitor`, `getMonitorList`.

⚠️ **Do not reach for `uptime-kuma-api`** (the Python wrapper). It is abandoned
— last release 2023-09-26 — and its stated ceiling is *"support for uptime kuma
1.23.0 and 1.23.1"*. It does not support 2.x and never will. Use a thin
first-party Socket.IO client instead.

## The Homepage widget is deliberately absent

The compose carries **no `homepage.widget.*` labels**. The widget needs a
published status-page slug, and a from-scratch install has none — it would poll
a 404 forever. That matters more here than elsewhere: homepage widgets pointed
at dead targets are the suspected mechanism behind *both* of that dashboard's
unkillable wedges (see `incident_esh_docker_nfs_boot_race`, 2026-06-03 entry).

Re-add `homepage.widget.type` / `.url` / `.slug` only once the status page
actually exists. Label changes need `docker compose up -d`, not `restart`.

## Data

Named volume `uptimekuma_uptime-kuma` → `/app/data` holds every monitor
definition and all history. Recreating the container is safe; deleting that
volume is not.