Monitoring overview
This page is for in-house IT teams and service owners who must know that a public website is up, healthy and not under attack, and must be able to show it. It maps each question to the place in Exponential that answers it, and gives a routine. The hosting view is Monitoring overview (hosting).
Contents
- Questions and where they are answered
- Signals that can feed your monitoring system
- A routine
- Who watches what
- Related pages
Questions and where they are answered
| Question | Where | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Is the site up for citizens? | an outside check of the public address and the sign-in page | External uptime monitoring |
| Is the installation healthy? | Setup > System information, Health checks; ./console exp:system:info | System information and health checks |
| What errors happen? | Setup > Log files, Error digest, Log health | The log viewer, Error digest and log health |
| Is someone probing us? | security.log, 404.log | Request logs |
| Would the content security policy break something? | csp.log | CSP reports |
| Did anyone do something risky? | the audit alerts | Audit alerts |
| Is the record intact? | exp:audit verify | Audit trail verification |
| Do scheduled jobs run? | Setup > Cronjobs, the cronjob health check | Cronjob monitoring |
| Did files change unexpectedly? | Setup > Upgrade check; checkmanifest.php | Upgrade check as a monitor |
| Are logs within budget? | Log health; rotation settings | Log retention and rotation |
Signals that can feed your monitoring system
Commands that end with a meaningful exit code or JSON, suitable for a monitoring agent:
| Command | Signal |
|---|---|
./console exp:system:info --json --allow-root-user | exits 1 when a health check fails |
./console exp:audit verify --allow-root-user | exits 1 when a chain is broken |
php bin/php/checkmanifest.php --all | exits non-zero when files are modified or missing |
php bin/php/cache.php status --allow-root-user | ends in PASS or FAIL; --json available |
./console exp:logs --search=... --json | exit 0 found, 1 nothing found |
| the audit syslog sink | records in syslog, journalctl -t exponential with Transport=local |
The audit's alert sinks (syslog, a signed webhook, e-mail) push events to you (Audit trail, "Sinks, alerts and archives").
A routine
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Continuously | outside checks of the public site and the sign-in page; audit alert mail and syslog |
| Daily | Error digest of the last 24 hours; fired audit alerts |
| Weekly | security.log review (Review the security log weekly); cronjob runs; exp:audit verify; system information health checks |
| Monthly | upgrade check; log health and disk; account hygiene; backup restore test as your plan says (Monthly operations review) |
The operating guide's weekly checklist is a good minimum.
Who watches what
Write down who receives which alert and who acts out of hours. Exponential sends audit alerts to the rule's
recipients, else the configured groups, else the site's AdminEmail; check with
./console exp:audit alerts recipients --allow-root-user. On-call rotations and escalation are an organizational
matter outside the software.
Related pages
- Incidents
- Health checks and uptime (hosting)
- Operating a site
- Logs and the audit trail course module
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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