Ciao: A Self Hosted Site Status Monitor with Email Notifications

I recently covered Monitorr, a dashboard for seeing whether sites of importance for you are up or down.  A great piece of software, but it lacked any notification system.  This missing piece meant you really had to monitor Monitorr in order to know if a site was up or down at any given time.

This brings us to Ciao.  Ciao is a very clean looking system status monitor that provides the ability to view a simple, clean dashboard; but also offers a notification system via Email, as well as the option to use Webhooks in systems like RocketChat, Telegram, Slack, etc.

Our Installation Today

What you'll need:

• Docker-CE
• The proper SMTP information for your Email provider
• The Command to pull and start Ciao.

Docker-CE

I have several videos on how to install Docker-CE, Docker-Compose, and other base level software packages that I use in most of my videos.  Today, we just need the Docker-CE portion.  

If you're running Linux (and more specifically Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04), I have a scrpt that will install Docker-CE, Docker-Compose, and all their dependencies.

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common -y
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

## for ubuntu 18.04
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable"

## for ubuntu 20.04
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu focal stable"

sudo apt update
apt-cache policy docker-ce
sudo apt install docker-ce -y

## now set user as part of docker group
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}

## install docker-compose
sudo apt install docker-compose -y

Create a directory called Ciao, then create a file inside that directory  called "docker-install.sh" and copy the above text, then paste it into the file.

mkdir ciao

cd ciao

nano docker-install.sh

Paste the above code into it, and remove either the Ubuntu 18.04 part, or the Ubuntu 20.04 part.  If you're running 18.04, remove 20.04, and vice-versa.

Save the script with CTRL+O, then press Enter / Return, and exit nano with CTRL+X.

Now we can run the script like this:

. ./docker-install.sh

Enter your sudo password when prompted.

Let it finish, then reboot or log out and back in to allow your user to be added to the docker group.  This just makes it so you don't have to type "sudo" before every docker command.

Install Ciao

Now we can get down to business, and install Ciao.  We'll be setting it up with our install command to be able to send emails when a status changes for a site we are monitoring, so we need to include a few special environment varaibles.

The command looks like this:

docker run   --name ciao   -p 8090:3000   -e SECRET_KEY_BASE="sensitive_secret_key_base"   -e SMTP_ADDRESS=smtp.yourhost.com   -e SMTP_EMAIL_FROM="ciao@yourhost.com" -e SMTP_EMAIL_TO="you@yourhost.com"   -e SMTP_PORT=587   -e SMTP_DOMAIN=smtp.yourhost.com   -e SMTP_AUTHENTICATION=plain   -e SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS_AUTO=true   -e SMTP_USERNAME=ciao   -e SMTP_PASSWORD="sensitive_password"   -v /opt/ciao/data:/app/db/sqlite brotandgames/ciao

While the above is easier to edit in the terminal, it's easier to look at like this:

docker run -d --name ciao \
    -p 8090:3000 \  -
    -e SECRET_KEY_BASE="sensitive_secret_key_base" \   
    -e SMTP_ADDRESS=smtp.yourhost.com \   
    -e SMTP_EMAIL_FROM="ciao@yourhost.com" \   
    -e SMTP_EMAIL_TO="you@yourhost.com" \   
    -e SMTP_PORT=587 \   
    -e SMTP_DOMAIN=smtp.yourhost.com \   
    -e SMTP_AUTHENTICATION=plain \   
    -e SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS_AUTO=true \   
    -e SMTP_USERNAME=ciao \   
    -e SMTP_PASSWORD="sensitive_password" \   
    -v /opt/ciao/data:/app/db/sqlite \ 
    brotandgames/ciao

So let's break down this massive command.

docker run -d --name ciao Gives the command to create a container called "ciao" and run it in the background so we can close the terminal without killing the app.

-p 8090:3000 says mapr my host machine port 8090 to the container port 3000.  You can change the host machine port to any port you have free, just don't change the container port.

-e SECRET_KEY_BASE="sensitive_secret_key_base" generates a secret key for your data...but if you omit this whole piece, then Ciao will autogenerate a key for you.  it's nothing you need to know for any reason.

Next we have multiple lines that deal with our email.

    -e SMTP_ADDRESS=smtp.yourhost.com \   
    -e SMTP_EMAIL_FROM="ciao@yourhost.com" \   
    -e SMTP_EMAIL_TO="you@yourhost.com" \   
    -e SMTP_PORT=587 \   
    -e SMTP_DOMAIN=smtp.yourhost.com \   
    -e SMTP_AUTHENTICATION=plain \   
    -e SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS_AUTO=true \   
    -e SMTP_USERNAME=ciao \   
    -e SMTP_PASSWORD="sensitive_password" \

Everything above requires that you know the SMTP information for the email service you intend to use.