Monitoring

Introduction

The monitoring module exports host metrics to Grafana Cloud through Alloy, provides Cockpit for host administration, and runs Smokeping for network latency history.

Requirements

Grafana Cloud monitoring requires the agenix-managed grafana-cloud-env secret containing GRAFANA_CLOUD_API_KEY. Set the host role to desktop, laptop, or server; optionally enable SMART metrics on hosts where smartctl can inspect the disks. Smokeping requires the Podman server and shared storage. Cockpit’s configured web origins depend on the host name and tailnet domain.

Persistence

Alloy state is persisted at /var/lib/private/alloy through the root filesystem persistence abstraction. Smokeping state is stored in storage.datasets.app.children.smokeping. Cockpit primarily exposes host state and does not declare a separate application dataset.

Troubleshooting

For Grafana Cloud, inspect alloy.service, /etc/alloy/config.alloy, /run/agenix/grafana-cloud-env, and persisted state at /var/lib/private/alloy. If SMART metrics are missing, check prometheus-smartctl-exporter.service and its loopback listener. Smokeping uses smokeping.service, apps-network.service, and /storage/app/smokeping/{config,data}; Cockpit uses cockpit.socket and cockpit.service on port 9090.

Options

cockpit.enable

Enable Cockpit web UI.

Type: boolean

Default:

false

Declared by:

• modules/monitor/cockpit.nix

grafanaCloud.enable

Whether to enable host monitoring through Grafana Cloud.

Type: boolean

Default:

false

Example:

true

Declared by:

• modules/monitor/alloy.nix

grafanaCloud.prometheus.url

Grafana Cloud Prometheus remote-write endpoint.

Type: string

Default:

"https://prometheus-us-central1.grafana.net/api/prom/push"

Declared by:

• modules/monitor/alloy.nix

grafanaCloud.prometheus.username

Grafana Cloud Prometheus tenant ID.

Type: string

Default:

"711583"

Declared by:

• modules/monitor/alloy.nix

grafanaCloud.role

Host role attached to metrics for dashboards and alert routing.

Type: one of “desktop”, “laptop”, “server”

Default:

"desktop"

Declared by:

• modules/monitor/alloy.nix

grafanaCloud.smartctl.enable

Whether to enable SMART metrics collection.

Type: boolean

Default:

false

Example:

true

Declared by:

• modules/monitor/alloy.nix

smokeping.enable

Enable Smokeping container and Caddy endpoint.

Type: boolean

Default:

false

Declared by:

• modules/monitor/smokeping.nix