Each sample carries each NFS mount's requests since the last one: how many
a second, their round trip and execute time (READ and WRITE on their own),
and how many were sent again or hit a major timeout. mountstats is the
kernel's own count and never touches the share, so it reads while one is
stuck. Steward stores them per mount and the slowest on the host as
nfs_exe_max_ms, for an "NFS slow" rule and the host page's NFS chart beside
mounts_stalled; each mount's bar says what a request took.
Agent 1.22.0 (which also carries the backlog order from 41fc807).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
On 2026-10-17 the NFS under Postgres stalled for ~15 minutes. Two things
went wrong for the readings that would have explained it:
- The SNMP poll stored before it polled again, so while the database hung
it stopped polling. It now collects on schedule and hands each round to a
Holding (steward/core/holding.py): one writer stores what is held, oldest
first, each reading at the time it was collected. Bounded at two hours of
polls, with a 30-minute deadline on a store; the device list read falls
back to the last one read after 10 s.
- "Mount not answering" (10 checks in a row) went pending on Docker02 and
Docker03 and never fired: the agent sent each post's backlog with its
newest, healthy sample, and that sample ended every post's run. Agent
1.22.0 queues the new sample behind the backlog, so Steward receives a
host's samples in the order they were taken.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Agent 1.21.0. The hourly update check now covers the package managers
beyond apt and dnf (#5803 "The agent's update check reads pacman,
zypper and yum"):
- yum: `yum -C check-update`, `updateinfo list security`,
`needs-restarting -r`, as dnf.
- zypper: `--no-refresh list-updates` (`--dup` on Tumbleweed),
needed security patches from `list-patches --category security`,
and `zypper needs-rebooting`.
- pacman: `checkupdates` from pacman-contrib, which install-deps.sh now
installs. pacman has no security notion; a reboot is required once
the running kernel's /usr/lib/modules/<release> is gone.
The checks sit in one UPDATE_CHECKS table, and a failure names its
manager.
The root helper's update runs on the same hosts (#5804 "The scheduled
update runs on pacman, zypper and yum hosts"): yum upgrade, zypper
refresh + update (dup on Tumbleweed, with 102/103 counted as success),
pacman -Syu. Each step carries a label so a failure says which one,
and the reboot check reads zypper and the pacman kernel too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
smartctl reports every disk behind a PERC/MegaRAID controller as /dev/bus/0
with type megaraid,N; the helper named a drive by its path alone, so all of
VDNT-Docker02's and Docker03's disks read as one drive "0", each overwriting
the last. The slot is now part of the name (bus0-megaraid3), and Steward gives
a repeated name an ordinal so two drives never share a series. Agent 1.20.1.
fix(ansible): Steward stopping mid-run logs no traceback (#5749)
The run's done-callback called exception() on a cancelled task, which raises;
it now logs a run cut short by shutdown at INFO. A finished run's in-memory
state is dropped by a timer rather than a sleeping task, which shutdown found
still pending.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The root helper gains one read-only action, `drives`: it finds the drives
itself (smartctl --scan-open), reads each as JSON, and writes a summary the
agent carries on every sample (agent 1.20.0). Steward judges the figures in
drives.py (failing / worn / watch / ok / no SMART / unreadable), records them
per drive and as host roll-ups for covering rules, keeps the newest report on
the registration and lists it on the host page.
install-deps.sh installs smartmontools with apt, dnf, yum, zypper, pacman or
apk, run by install.sh and every agent playbook; one it can't install is
reported, never fatal.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
On 2026-10-14 nine swarm services sat at 0/1 and nothing fired. From each
manager's swarm report the docker plugin now records three figures on
resource "swarm": swarm_services_short, swarm_nodes_down and
swarm_managers_unreachable. Drained nodes are left out of the last two,
since a drain is deliberate. The figures are recorded at most once every
30 s whichever manager reported, and are offered to alert rules.
Agent 1.19.0 sends each manager's ManagerStatus.Reachability. Older agents
fall back to the node's status.
A maintenance job on a swarm node also keeps a window over docker/swarm,
so its drain and reboot hold those alerts until the job ends.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
temp_c_max was recorded on every ingest, but host_agent didn't offer it
to rules, so "host running hot" couldn't be watched. The catalog guard
didn't see the row(...) helper ingest builds its rows with. Now offered:
temp_c_max, temp_c per sensor, and network and disk throughput per host,
interface and disk. A new guard holds every literal row(...) name to the
catalog, except NOT_ALERTABLE, where each exclusion is given a reason.
temp_c_max reads in °C.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A board's spare thermistor inputs report whatever an open input reads, and
the value rule from #5759 only catches the impossible ones. Once an hour,
sensors.refresh judges each sensor against the host's CPU (Package id N,
Tctl/Tdie/TccdN, PECI Agent N) over a week of hourly averages. A sensor is
ruled out if it falls as the CPU warms (r <= -0.5) or holds within 0.5 °C
while the CPU moved 10 °C or more. A judgment needs at least 72 shared hours.
The host temperature leaves judged sensors out at ingest. The host page
lists them under "Not counted", with each reason given once.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5768 "A maintenance cadence: a group's updates and reboots, one host at a
time, on a schedule". A plan names an inventory group, a weekday and time
in a time zone, a window and a reboot policy (only when required by
default). At its slot a run takes the group's hosts in order and gives each
a #5767 maintenance job. The next host starts only when the last is back in
service: its agent is posting and, for a swarm node, the node is active and
every replicated service is at its replicas. A failure stops the run, and
no host is started once the window has passed. A host's latest failure
shows as host_agent/<host>/maintenance_failed, for an ordinary alert rule.
The page is Hosts → Maintenance.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5767 "Steward hands a host a maintenance job and follows it to the end,
through its own restarts", milestone 514.
A host_maintenance_jobs row per job: queued → updating → [draining →]
rebooting → [undraining →] done, or failed / timed_out. Steward's answer to
an ingest post carries the step that host's agent should carry out now; the
agent (1.18.0) leaves each step id for the root helper once, and the helper
refuses an id it already ran, so repeats are harmless. Results come back as
the #5766 maintenance events, matched by step id; the reboot completes when
the host's `started` event has a boot_at after the reboot was handed out.
The job reboots only when the update says one is needed (or never, if asked).
A swarm node is drained first by itself if it's a manager or by a manager
with the helper, and made active after; with no manager to drain it the job
is refused. A minute tick times out a job past its state's deadline. A
maintenance window over host_agent/<host> lasts the rest of the job.
Everything is on the row, so a Steward restart, or the reboot of the host
Steward runs on, resumes from the next post. Ingest runs it in its own
savepoint so a job going wrong never costs the samples.
The Agent panel leads with a running job and says what a finished one did;
Manage agent has Update now (with "never reboot"), or says why a job can't
start. Integration test: hand off, Steward restarts, the post-boot events
close the job.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5766 "A root helper the agent can start, for a fixed set of maintenance
actions and nothing else", milestone 514.
The agent runs unprivileged under NoNewPrivileges, so it can't update or
reboot its host. It now leaves a request in /var/lib/steward-agent/requests,
the one path its unit lets it write; steward-maint.path starts maint.py as
root, which reads it without following links, accepts only update, reboot,
drain or undrain, deletes it, and writes the outcome to
/var/lib/steward-maint/results. The agent (1.17.0) reports each new result
state once as a `maintenance` event, re-checks pending updates when an update
finishes, and says in its metadata whether the helper is installed.
The units and the helper are served from one copy at
/plugins/host_agent/files/<name> (a fixed list), and install.sh plus the
install, provision and update playbooks all fetch them, replacing three
inline copies of the unit. Update agent installs the helper on existing
hosts; the Agent panel says under Manage agent whether it is there.
Steward handing out jobs is #5767; the cadence is #5768.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Step 1 of milestone 514 "Updates and reboots on a cadence, carried out by
each host's agent…": #5765 "The agent reports pending updates and whether
a reboot is required".
- Agent 1.16.0: an hourly background check (apt-check, apt list, or dnf -C
with updateinfo and needs-restarting), each command bounded at 120 s, no
root and no network. Debian's reboot-required marker and its packages
are read every sample.
- Ingest records updates_pending, updates_security and reboot_required for
rules, and keeps the newest on the registration (host_agent_005_updates).
- The Agent card leads with "Reboot required since …", then the updates
waiting or "Up to date", with when the check ran. list_agents carries
them too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5764 "The agent reads a container's whole log backlog into memory, on its
main loop, with no overall deadline". Docker03's 1.13.0 agent went silent
for a day at 2.1 GB and 46 h of CPU, then ignored SIGTERM.
- One shared reader, _docker_get: each answer has an overall deadline and a
byte cap, not only a per-recv timeout. A trickling or endless body is cut
off (15 s / 32 MiB for JSON, 5 s / 4 MiB for a log read).
- Container logs: since the cursor but only the newest 2,000 lines, all
within 10 s. A note says when older lines were skipped, and a container
whose answer is too big skips ahead to now instead of re-reading its
backlog every interval.
- The agent reports its own RSS and CPU; Steward records agent_rss_bytes
and agent_cpu_pct, so a runaway agent shows before it goes silent.
Agent 1.15.0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5760 "One stalled NFS mount freezes the whole agent: statvfs has no
deadline, so the host goes silent while it still answers ping". The agent
read every mount inline in its only loop; a hard-mounted share whose server
stops blocks statvfs in the kernel with no timeout. Each mount is now read
in a daemon thread under one 5 s deadline. One that misses it is sent as
stalled, and isn't probed again while its last probe is still blocked. A
mount that errors (a stale handle) is left out instead of emptying the list.
Steward counts them as mounts_stalled (alertable: "an NFS share stopped"),
and skips the fullest-disk figure when every mount stalled.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5756 "The agent says when its host rebooted and when it lost contact, so
downtime is recorded as what it was". Agent 1.14.0 posts events with the
next post that gets through: started (with the host's boot time), stopping
(on SIGTERM, with whether systemd says the host is going down) and
lost_contact (from its first unanswered post to the one carrying it).
Steward keeps them as the host's downtime (host_downtime): reboot,
agent_stop, unclean (a boot after the agent was last heard that nobody
announced) or lost_contact. Retried posts apply once.
An announced stop explains the silence for reboot_grace_seconds (Settings
-> Plugins -> host_agent, 10 minutes): seconds_since_seen reads 0 until
then, and the host's other rules go quiet with it (agents_away beside
#5721's registry). Past the grace, agent offline fires.
The host's Agent card lists the last 7 days of downtime. Rows are pruned
at data.retention_days.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
At 20:25-20:39Z the NFS storage under steward_db slowed badly (checkpoint
sync 4.6 s, then 70.7 s with one file at 21.9 s, against the usual 0.002 s).
Ingest commits stalled past the agent's 10 s timeout and were dropped, and
last_seen_at, written in that same transaction, went with them. Agents
posting every few seconds read as silent for 3 minutes, and "Agent offline"
fired and emailed for all three hosts.
Ingest now notes each agent's arrival in memory right after the (read-only)
registration lookup, before any write; seconds_since_seen counts from the
later of last_seen_at and that arrival.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- New installs start from widgets.RECOMMENDED, packed row by row for the
enabled plugins; the edit drawer can reset a dashboard to it.
- Host Agent — Resources folds into Hosts — Overview (which gains load 1m),
UniFi — Devices into UniFi — Overview; migration 0032 moves existing
dashboards onto the survivors.
- The Overview labels what it counts (hosts, monitors up/down/pending,
alerts firing) and lists firing alerts and down monitors with since-times.
- Uptime polls every 5 minutes (poll_seconds) instead of every cycle.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Design-spec updates for m79: the docker_logs_enabled / docker_log_exclude config
keys, the collect_docker_logs collector + the drop-logs-on-backoff note in the
agent internals, and a wire-format design point on docker_logs riding in the same
push (with server-side toggle/exclude enforcement + the per-container ring).
The end-to-end chain (store → rotate → query + ingest enforcement) is already
covered by the integration tests added across steps 2–5, so no capstone test is
added. AGENT_VERSION bump (1.7.0) landed in step 1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CAGR73DUowdVFVvYzLXC5C
Renames the Python package directory, CLI command, env var prefix,
docker-compose service/container/image, Postgres role/db, and all
visible branding. Marketing form is "Fabled Steward".
Clean break from the previous rebrand: drops the fabledscryer→roundtable
import shim in __init__.py and the FABLEDSCRYER_* env var fallback in
config.py and migrations/env.py. Env vars are now STEWARD_* only.
Heads-up for existing deployments:
- Postgres user/db renamed fabledscryer → steward in docker-compose.yml.
Existing volumes need the role/db renamed inside Postgres, or override
POSTGRES_USER/POSTGRES_DB to keep the old names.
- Host-agent systemd unit is now steward-agent.service. Existing agents
keep running under the old name; reinstall to switch.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Design for a push-based Python agent that collects CPU/memory/storage/
load/uptime from remote Linux hosts and POSTs to a new host_agent
plugin. Uses per-host bearer tokens, systemd install via curl|sh,
in-memory ring buffer with exponential backoff, and writes to the
existing PluginMetric bus plus a plugin-private registrations table.
No core schema changes — plugin stays strictly isolated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
