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>
The same Holding as the SNMP poll, for the rest of Steward's own
collectors:
- Monitors: the list is read within 10 s or the last one read stands in;
a start the database doesn't take is kept in memory, so a monitor isn't
checked twice; each result is held and stored at the time it was
checked. A stall shows on the monitors as the checks it saw, not a gap.
- UniFi and Traefik: each poll's writes are held (hold_write) and run
oldest first in one transaction; every reading is stamped with its scrape.
- A held round the database refuses (as opposed to can't be reached) is
stored alone and let go, so it can't hold up every round after it.
The Prometheus scrape is left as it is: its one target, Fabled Archives,
keeps its own database on the same NFS.
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>
A redeploy's new process ticks at once, so its once-a-minute samples never
broke for 90 s and get_anomaly showed none of the day's restarts. The first
self-monitor tick in a process now records restart_gap_secs (time since the
last process's last sample), and steward_gaps shows each one as a restart.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5834 "The host agent is always on, and the MCP sees a host's
maintenance", step 1 of milestone 520 "The MCP sees what Steward has
grown".
The host agent is a core system (operator, 2026-10-15: "it's very core
to the functionality of Steward as a whole and shouldn't be considered
something that can be toggled off"). ALWAYS_ON_PLUGINS in core settings
makes to_plugins_cfg report it enabled whatever its stored row says, so
it always loads and its MCP tools are always listed. Settings -> Plugins
shows it as "Built in: always on" with no switch, and a save keeps it
enabled. Its code and URLs stay under plugins/host_agent: every
installed agent posts to /plugins/host_agent/ingest.
Maintenance through the MCP:
- list_maintenance_plans: each plan's group, weekly slot, reboot policy,
next slot, and its latest run (hosts, how far it got, who it skipped
and why, how it ended).
- get_maintenance_job(host | job): a host's jobs, newest and running
first, or one job: state, packages updated, reboot, drained by, why it
failed, when its current state times out.
- run_maintenance(host, reboot="if_required" | "never"): admin, as the
host page's Update now; refuses a busy host or one with no helper;
audited "<user> via MCP".
- The overview names a host whose latest job in the last week failed or
timed out.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
On the live restore the "before restore" backup.made row read user
"unknown": _safety_backup recorded it with no username. It now carries
the person who started the restore.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5816 "Restoring mode": while a backup goes back in, the scheduler holds,
ingest and HTMX answer 503 with Retry-After (agents keep their samples),
and every page says what is happening. A safety backup of Steward as it
stands is made first, to /data/backups and the bucket. The backup's key
is put in place, the restore audited, and Steward exits with code 3 so
Swarm, compose or systemd starts it fresh. A failed in-place restore
changes nothing and says why on Backups; a full replace that fails after
the wipe restarts into first-run setup.
#5817 "Settings → Backups: Restore": a Restore button on each sent backup
and on the file card. The chosen backup is checked (the same comparison
as Check, now a shared partial) and held server-side for an hour under a
token; it starts only once the admin types "restore", and an older
backup also needs "Replace everything" ticked. A newer backup, or one
whose key can't open its secrets, gets no button.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5815 "Restore engine: in place for a same-version backup".
restore_in_place (steward/backup/restore.py) runs in one transaction:
1. It keeps aside what Steward records as it runs: ACTIVITY columns of rows
that come back, and STATE_SETTINGS.
2. It drops every foreign key touching a replaced table.
3. It truncates the replaced tables and COPYs the backup's rows in
unparsed, through asyncpg.
4. It puts the kept state back and moves sequences past their rows.
5. It puts right the rows whose parent didn't come back, by each key's own
ON DELETE. A RESTRICT key that may be empty is cleared, so a run whose
user is gone keeps its record.
6. It re-adds the keys, which checks every row.
A failure anywhere rolls the whole restore back. A backup made at another
schema is refused with NotSameSchema ("older": a full replace is the way;
"newer": update Steward).
The COPY-text reading moves into steward/backup/pgdata.py, shared by the
check and the restore. The integration tests stand in for pg_restore with
this database's own COPY output:
- settings come back while the audit log and the history of what remains
stay;
- history of what didn't come back goes;
- a failure part-way changes nothing;
- a newer schema is refused.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5823 "Check a backup: compare what it would restore with what is in
place, without restoring".
- steward/backup/check.py: pg_restore writes the backup's rows as COPY
text with no database involved. The rows in place go out through COPY in
the same form. Tables are compared on their primary keys, over the columns
both sides have, and grouped by area.
- Sealed values are opened with each side's own key and compared as
plaintext digests, so a secret sealed twice still matches. They are never
shown. A backup whose key can't open its own secrets fails the check.
- What Steward records as it runs (last-seen times, a schedule's last run,
backup history, scraped UniFi fields) is left out of the comparison:
contents.ACTIVITY, STATE_SETTINGS and HAND_SET_ONLY.
- Settings → Backups:
- a Check button on each sent backup, which fetches it from the bucket
(new s3.get_file);
- "Check a file" to upload one, with the size limit raised before the
CSRF check reads the form;
- a results page.
- Each backup Steward sends checks itself once written, and its history
row says how that went.
- New CLI command `steward check-backup FILE`. CI's image smoke step checks a
real backup against its source and expects a match.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5822 "Backup contents: settings and keys only". The operator's ruling
(System 180, 2026-10-15) overturns 2026-10-12's "Config + audit + alerts":
a backup is for system recovery and carries what would otherwise have to
be set up again, with no logs or history.
- contents.py: audit_events, alert_events, alert_states, metric_anomalies,
metric_anomaly_spans and user_invites move to EXCLUDED.
- Alert state is no longer restored, and evaluation skips a rule with no
state row. ensure_rule_states (alerts/service.py) gives every
single-resource rule lacking one an inactive row; alert_reconcile runs
it each minute.
- Docs, the Backups page and the CLI help say what a backup holds now.
CI's image check also finds the audit log empty after a restore.
- tests/integration/test_backup_restore_fixes.py is removed: its case (an
alert event naming a left-out Ansible run) no longer arises. The SET NULL
fix-up is covered by a unit test on synthetic tables.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Overview: a verdict line when something is wrong ('1 alert firing, 1
monitor down.'); its picker description now says what it lists (alerts,
monitors down, anomalies). Host figures have their home in Hosts.
Comments no longer name the Status page that was folded into Monitors.
- Monitors widget: a monitor not checked yet says when it was added.
- Host page: filesystems fullest first, by the worse of space and inodes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Routers: a router in trouble reads 'started 2h ago' or 'all of the last
24 h', from problem_since over the day's history, read for the troubled
routers only (a certificate's problem carries its own date). Hosts: a
down host reads 'a monitor is down for 3h'; host_glance keeps the
down_since host_status already had.
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>
#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>
#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>
VDNT-Util01's / ran out of inodes (956 free of 60.8M) with 274G of space
left; every file create failed and Steward's page read healthy at 66%.
- Agent 1.13.0 reports each mount's inodes (statvfs; a filesystem reporting
none, like btrfs, is left without).
- Ingest records inodes_used_pct per mount, and disk_used_pct_worst is the
fullest mount by space or inodes, so existing disk-full rules and the
overview see it.
- The host's health strip, the Hosts widget and the host glance grade / by
whichever is fuller and name inodes when they are ("Disk / 66% · inodes
100%", "Inodes on / ... past its critical threshold").
Hosts pick up the inode figures once their agent is updated to 1.13.0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
An agent's flushed backlog brings samples hours old. The resume was stamped
at the first old sample's time, inside the silence it ended, and silence was
still judged by the backlog's sample times, so the series was marked silent
again between posts and resumed a second time. A resumed series now counts as
heard at ingest time, its events from that batch are stamped no earlier, and
the rest of the backlog reads as late samples.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Host CPU, memory and load per core, container CPU and memory, and every
monitor's response time learn a normal per hour (milestone 513, System 182).
A reading past its fixed cutoff but within its normal reads healthy and says
what is usual at this hour; one well out of it keeps its grade and is a
metric anomaly. Disk, a monitor down and an agent offline keep their cutoffs.
- Each normal's floor, the smallest departure that counts, is a setting:
Settings -> Thresholds -> Normals (norms.floor.*). Defaults: host CPU 10
points, host memory 5, load per core 10, container CPU 10 points of one
core, container memory 5, monitor response 100 ms; Traefik's 2-point 4xx
and 50 ms p95 floors move there from constants. learn_normal takes a
floor function (floor_setting) read at each pass.
- learn_normal(parts=False): a host learns, its cores don't.
- Ingest records load_pct (load_1m / cores x 100), the figure pages grade.
- Shared grading: anomalies.against / graded, worst_reading(normals=),
hosts' host_grades, docker usage(thresholds=, norms=), monitors'
latency_grade. Applied to host vitals, the Hosts widget, MCP overview,
Docker usage, and the monitor list, widget and page.
- The monitor and container pages list their anomalies.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5740 "A metric that departs from its normal is recorded as an anomaly to
review, and is findable after it ends", milestone 513.
- Every minute each learned key's last 15 minutes is judged against its
hour's normal: above the usual hold x1.25 and by the metric's floor opens
an occurrence, which ends when the level comes back.
- metric_anomalies holds one row per item to review; a repeat while it
still waits joins it as an occurrence (metric_anomaly_spans).
- An ended row nobody reviews within anomalies.review_days (14, Settings ->
Thresholds) lapses; an ongoing one never does.
- Learning skips every hour an occurrence covers unless its anomaly was
marked normal: no normal is learned without review.
- Alerts -> Anomalies lists those to review first, then the reviewed and
lapsed under day dividers; marking is operator/admin and audited.
- The Overview widget and get_overview warn of open ones and count those
to review; the host page shows its own; the weekly report lists the
week's and the lapsed; MCP list_anomalies and review_anomaly.
- Reviewed and lapsed rows are pruned at data.retention_days, and kept
in backups like alert history.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A metric registered with learn_normal() gets, for every resource reporting
it, a usual hold (the 90th percentile across past days of each hour's p95)
and a usual peak for each slot:
- an hour of the day once 5 days of history exist;
- an hour of the week once history reaches back 3 weeks, so weekly jobs are
learned too.
Each slot takes in the hours either side, so a job that runs a little late
stays normal. One SQL statement relearns everything hourly into
metric_norms, from the rollup plus the raw window not rolled up yet;
norms_at() reads the slot a moment falls in. Nothing is registered yet:
Traefik (#5741) and hosts (#5742) opt in.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- The audit-wording guard now reads both branches of a conditional action
("backup.made" if ok else "backup.failed"), and its self-test covers that.
- The Backups save test no longer asserts the session's tz, which sign-in
state sets, not the test.
- The restore integration test uses the app's own metadata. all_metadata
without plugin dirs imports the `plugins` package as the tests do; loading
by path under the loader's names is only for `steward restore`. Loading by
path in the shared test process had mapped traefik and unifi tables a
second time for later tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5673 "S3 client and the backup job: settings, schedule, history, metrics":
- steward/backup/s3.py: SigV4 over httpx, path-style; put and list only
(an append-only key is enough; retention is the bucket's). Signing is held
to AWS's published examples.
- steward/backup/job.py: a 15-minute tick. The daily backup goes at the hour
chosen on the reader's clock; a missed day is made up, and a failure is
retried an hour later. History of the last 30 runs, audit
(backup.made / backup.failed), and backup_age_secs / backup_bytes under
"Steward itself", resource backup, for alert rules.
- Settings → Backups: verdict first, then the bucket (secret sealed; a
blank box keeps it), the schedule, Test the bucket, Back up now, and the
recent runs.
#5675 "Docs: backing up to Archives, and restoring": docs/core/backups.md.
Also: the audit page now words the Prometheus target actions from #5668,
which showed as codes, and a guard fails on any logged action without
wording.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The backup file (#5672 "Backup file: pg_dump of config + audit + alert
history, the secret key and a manifest"): steward-<UTC>.tar holding a
pg_dump --format=custom with metrics', check results' and Docker/Traefik/
UniFi rows left out, the secret key, and a manifest. Every table is named
KEPT or EXCLUDED in steward/backup/contents.py, and a guard test fails on a
new one. The image gains postgresql-client-17 (approved, System 180).
The restore (#5674 "Restore: `steward restore` and a CI test that a dump
brings Steward back"): pg_restore in its three sections. Between data and
constraints, a kept row pointing at a left-out row gets what its foreign
key's ON DELETE says (alert_events.ansible_run_id is cleared). It refuses
a non-empty database unless --wipe, and puts the backup's key in
/data/secret.key. Migrations run on Steward's next start.
`steward` stays the server command: it is now a click group that serves
when given no subcommand.
The publish smoke step backs up the booted image's database, restores it
into a second one, checks a marker setting came back and plugin_metrics
is empty, and starts Steward on it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The UniFi password sat in plugin.unifi in plain text: SECRET_KEYS covers
whole settings, and a plugin's settings are one dict. Saving the plugin's
settings page also wiped it, since the password box is never filled back
in and its blank value was stored.
- A plugin field whose name holds password, secret or token is a
credential (is_plugin_secret). set_setting seals it inside the dict,
every read opens it, startup seals any plaintext left from before, and
the undecryptable-secrets banner names it as plugin.<name>.<field>.
- The settings page uses the same test for its password boxes, and a blank
box keeps the saved value.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A bundled prometheus plugin, on by default like the other protocol plugins.
Targets are rows edited on its page: address, bearer token (encrypted),
interval, keep/leave-out name patterns and a series cap. Steward does the
filtering; the endpoint serves everything (Archives' ruling).
- A 5 s tick scrapes due targets at once, each within a 30 s deadline, and
writes the outcome to its row and its series through record_metrics, so
alert rules can watch any of them.
- Gauges are stored as they are; counters (and a histogram's or summary's
_sum/_count) as <name>_per_sec rates from the second scrape. Buckets and
quantiles are skipped. A labelled series is stored under
"<target>:k=v,…". Each target also records is_up, scrape_ms, series_kept
and series_capped.
- Pages: targets not answering first, with why; a target's series grouped
by metric with their newest values; a chart per series; the editor with
Test, which scrapes once and says what would be stored.
- The counter-to-rate keeper moves to steward/core/counter_rates.py; SNMP's
RateKeeper now scales its rate on top of it.
- metric_value reads Prometheus's _seconds as a span and _per_sec as a rate.
- The catalog guard treats an empty list as a dynamic source (snmp,
prometheus), as the rule form does.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
steward/core/prometheus.py parses the 0.0.4 exposition into families keyed
by name, each with its declared TYPE, so a scraper can tell a counter from a
gauge. A histogram or summary owns its _bucket/_sum/_count samples. Label
values are unescaped, and commas or braces inside quotes stay part of the
value. NaN and +/-Inf are read, timestamps are ignored, and a malformed
line is skipped. Traefik's parse_prometheus is now a thin reshaping of it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Under an hour |ago says "12m 3s ago", so the test looks for the minutes
alone; the reading cell drops an empty class.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Alerts widget (/alerts/widget) is shaped like every widget: a verdict
("2 firing, 1 silent." / "Nothing firing: all 12 rules are quiet."), then
what is firing or silent with its reading now, what the rule fires on and
since when, then what someone acknowledged and who; a line when alert
email failed in the last 7 days or is retrying (outbox.alert_trouble),
linking admins to Settings -> System; the quiet rules counted, a covering
rule once. It sits beside the Overview in the recommended layout (6x4
each).
The Overview's "+N more" line pointed at the removed /status/; alerts now
link to /alerts/ and monitors to /monitors/.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5509 "Delivery you can see: each alert's email state in history, and
outgoing email on Settings -> System" (milestone 501).
- Alerts -> History: an alert's email reads from the outbox (#5506):
"gathering" with when it sends, "sending", "retrying" with the attempt,
next try and the server's last answer, "sent", or "failed" naming each
reader it didn't reach and why (outbox.delivery / email_states). Events
from before the outbox keep what they recorded. The Notified column
shows once an alert has a queued email.
- Settings -> System gets "Outgoing email": every email of the last 7
days not yet sent, failures first, then the longest retrying, with
recipient, kind, state and last error, and a count of what was sent.
Failures and anything still retrying after 5 minutes lead the page's
verdict (outbox.outgoing).
- get_alert_history (MCP) adds `email`: the same delivery state.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5508 "Every other email through the outbox: weekly report, invites,
password resets, and the test buttons" (milestone 501).
- outbox.send_each queues one email per reader (claimed, so the sender
doesn't take it too) and tries them at once, for a page that answers
with what happened; outbox.said words the result. attempt takes a cfg
for a test of the form's unsaved settings and returns the settled rows.
- Weekly report (scheduled and Send now) and invites: queued, tried at
once; one the server couldn't take yet is retried for an hour. An invite
that didn't go shows its link with the reason, as before.
- Password reset: queued in the reset link's own transaction; the sender
delivers it on its next tick.
- Settings -> Notifications test email and a rule's Send test: queued and
recorded with retry=False, tried once (System 156 ruling).
- Removed mail.send, notifications._send_email and _smtp_send_sync;
dispatch_notifications is webhook only. A guard asserts only the outbox
(and smtp_open itself) opens an SMTP connection, with a self-test.
Also fixes run 8941 (#5507's integration test): its Also-send-to
addresses were "@test", which is_real_address rightly drops; they are
example.com now.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5507 "Alert emails through the outbox, gathered for 2 minutes"
(milestone 501). Replaces the in-memory core/alert_burst.py.
- outbox.hold_alert: an alert joins each recipient's held alert email, or
opens one due 2 minutes later (System 156 ruling). A Postgres advisory
lock keeps two alerts at once from opening two windows for one reader.
- email_outbox_events.alert_json (migration 0043) keeps the alert as it
fired, so the email written when the window closes says what it said.
- write_held writes it then, in the reader's zone: the usual alert email
for one alert, the list for several (outbox.alert_words).
- after_settle records on each AlertEvent, once every email carrying it
has settled: email_sent, or email_error naming each reader it didn't
reach and the server's reason.
- A held email survives a restart and goes out when its window closes.
- A refusal of a message's one recipient no longer repeats the address.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5506 "Email outbox: a table of outgoing email and a sender that retries
until accepted, for up to an hour" (milestone 501).
- email_outbox (migration 0042) holds each message per recipient, its
words, its state (held / pending / sending / sent / failed), attempts and
the server's last answer. email_outbox_events links alert events for
#5507.
- core/outbox.py: enqueue; a sender task every 15 s claims what is due
(SKIP LOCKED, stale claims released), sends the batch over one
connection with no session held, and settles each row:
- accepted -> sent;
- a 5xx refusal -> failed at once with the server's words;
- no connection, a timeout, a 4xx -> retried after 30 s, 1, 2, 5, 10,
15 min, the last try at the hour, then failed;
- a test (retry=False) settles on its first answer.
It runs on startup, so a row left by a restart goes out at boot.
- notifications.smtp_open is the one place a connection is opened.
- mail.message takes the html part as optional.
- cleanup ages email_outbox rows on the data window.
Senders move onto it in #5507 and #5508.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5469 "Settings → System: table sizes and what the last cleanup removed".
- Storage: each table's size on disk (pg_total_relation_size, indexes and TOAST
included) and Postgres's row estimate (reltuples), largest first, the 15
largest by name and the rest summed, under the database's total size. Read
from the catalog only, never by counting rows.
- Last cleanup: when it ran, how long it took, and what each pass removed (each
aged table, run log files, the metric and Docker rollups, the log ring), or
"Nothing was past its window". run_cleanup now returns that summary and keeps
it as the cleanup.last_run setting, as reports.last_sent_at does; cleanup_secs
(#5467) is recorded from the same figure.
- A hint links to where each retention window is set.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The `when` filter returns a <time> element, so title="{{ at|when }}" wrote raw
markup into the attribute. That broke the hover text, and in the rule form's
metric preview (#5475) it leaked a stray `">` into the page. `ago` already
carries the exact time as its own tooltip, so both places drop the title.
Also fixes#5467's page test, which needed the escaped apostrophe.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5467 "Steward's own health: metrics, rules can watch them, a page that shows them".
The self-monitor tick now records, under source "steward", resource "process":
ingest_posts / ingest_failed / ingest_slowest_ms (the host-agent posts since the
last tick, tallied in steward/core/health.py), db_roundtrip_ms (a timed SELECT 1),
and unwatched_secs (the gap before this tick past watch.GAP_S, from Steward's own
last sample). The hourly cleanup records cleanup_secs. The open-file pair is still
recorded, and is now only skipped on its own where /proc is absent. All of these
are in CORE_METRICS, so an alert rule can watch them under "Steward itself".
Settings → System (/settings/system/, admin) shows a verdict first (failed posts,
a gap in watching, open files near the limit), then each measure now and over the
last day, with a sparkline scaled to its own peak.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5485 "A rule's page waits up to 25 s for its metric preview: a cold 24 h
series read from plugin_metrics". Opening "Agent offline" took 25.6 s; a
cold day of one series measured 18.3 s over MCP, a warm one 63 ms. The
pickers still come with the page from plugin_metric_latest; the preview is
its own request (hx-trigger=load), showing "Reading the last day…" until it
lands. Picker swaps no longer read it either.
#5486 "Send test where it can be found": the button moves from inside "What
happens" to the page header beside History, its result under the verdict.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5483 "Alerts list: a covering rule's hosts start collapsed behind a toggle;
no dashed rows", from the operator's review of the Alerts list. Each rule is
its own tbody; its hosts sit in another, hidden until "N hosts" is pressed.
A rule with a host that isn't quiet opens on its own and names the host where
"last fired" was, so a problem never hides behind the fold. Host rows lose the
dashed rules for a sunken band under the indent.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5475 "Rule form: pick the host, then its part…". CI run 8909 caught it:
moving from the whole host to a mount kept "CPU" in the mount's Metric list,
because a chosen metric always stayed on offer. Only a rule's own page keeps
its resource and metric after they go quiet (keep=True from edit_rule); the
pickers' swaps drop a metric the new part doesn't report.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5475 "Rule form: pick the host, then its part; metrics that part reports;
a link to groups; a preview of the metric", from the operator's review of
the New rule page: hosts and their parts shared one long picker.
- Host agent rules pick a Host, then a Part: "The whole host", then its
mounts, CPU cores, disks, interfaces and sensors under a heading each,
cores in number order. A part that reports nothing a rule can watch
(an interface's traffic) isn't offered.
- The Metric list holds what the picked resource reports, in catalog order.
- Under it, a preview: the reading now, and the last 24 h low to high with
an hourly sparkline drawn from zero (UI ruling 8), read from one series.
- The group picker links to Ansible > Inventory to make a group, in a new
tab, and re-reads the groups when the tab comes back into view.
- Picking a host or part swaps the pickers alone (/alerts/api/rule_target);
picking a metric swaps the preview (/alerts/api/metric_preview).
- A rule's own resource and metric stay on offer after they go quiet.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5473 "Opening an alert rule takes up to 15 s: the Resource picker scans
every raw host-agent sample". The access log showed the edit page at 6-15 s
(one load gave up) while /alerts/ took 0.2 s. resources_for ran SELECT
DISTINCT over plugin_metrics, and Postgres has no skip scan, so it read every
host-agent sample; every rule page, source swap, rule save and MCP rule call
paid it. resources_for and metrics_for now read plugin_metric_latest, one
row per series, which lists the same names. A test fails if either reads
plugin_metrics again.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5466 "Send test: check a rule's delivery from the rule". A rule's page gets
a Send test button (operator role), and MCP gets send_test_alert. Each sends
a TEST alert for that rule now, by email to everyone who gets alerts and by
webhook. The alert carries the rule's name and condition, at the latest
reading of what it watches; a rule covering hosts uses its first host. The
result for each channel shows under the button, or "Nothing is set up to
send to". Nothing fires, no event is written, and the test is audited as
alert_rule.tested. An alert with no reading now says "has no reading yet"
instead of "is None".
Docs: alerting.md also gains the burst email from #5465 "One email per burst
of alerts".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5465 "One email per burst of alerts". When a switch reboots, every host's
agent-offline rule fires at once and each account got one email per rule.
Alert email now waits 30 s from the first alert: each recipient then gets one
message listing every alert in the window, oldest first, in their own zone
("[Steward] 3 alerts: 2 firing, 1 resolved"). One alert alone keeps its
usual email. Webhooks still post per alert, at once. Every alert's event
records the email's outcome. A burst held when Steward stops is not sent;
the alerts stay on the record and on the Alerts page.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5464 "Group rules: one rule covers every host, or every host in a group",
step 2 of milestone 499 "Alerts you can trust". Each rule named one host, so
the live instance carried six rules for three hosts, and a new host had no
agent-offline or disk alert until someone copied them.
- alert_rules.covers / cover_group / parent_id (migration 0041). A rule on
host_agent may cover "all_hosts" or a "group" (an inventory group: the
Hosts ruling, #5294). A covering rule has no state; Steward keeps one
ordinary child rule per covered host, named "<rule>: <host>", so each
host's alert keeps its own state, history and acknowledgement.
- alerts.service.reconcile_children: a covered host that has reported in
the last 7 days gets a child; a host no longer covered loses its child;
children take the parent's condition, checks, notify setting, action and
on/off. Run on save and each minute (alert_reconcile).
- A child is changed through its parent: edit, toggle and delete of a child
are refused (409 / PartOfCoveringRule); its edit page opens the parent.
- Rule form: a Covers choice for host sources, with the group picker; fixed
once the rule exists. Rules list: a covering rule reads "every host in
swarm · 3 hosts" with its hosts' rules nested under it, each opening its
history. The history picker and the rule count leave covering rules out.
- MCP: create_alert_rule takes covers/group; update_alert_rule takes group
and passes changes down; list_alert_rules shows covers, hosts and part_of.
- docs/core/alerting.md: "Rules that cover hosts".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5463 "Acknowledgements on record: an event and who did it", step 1 of
milestone 499 "Alerts you can trust". The live walk in #5461 found that
acknowledging changed only the alert's current state: once it resolved,
nothing said who had acknowledged it or when.
- alert_events.actor_id (migration 0040): the person behind a transition.
- Acknowledging writes a firing → acknowledged event by the acknowledger.
- A rule edit, disable or enable that resets an alert carries its actor
(web and MCP alike).
- The history page notes "acknowledged by X" and "rule disabled by X"; MCP
get_alert_history returns `by`.
- One usernames() helper in alerts.service, used by the active list, the
history page and the MCP tools.
- docs/core/alerting.md: the state diagram no longer shows an acknowledged
alert re-firing, and says what an event records.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
_DueTracker counted a task that had never run from 0 on the loop clock,
which is host uptime, so every run_on_startup=False task (hourly data
cleanup with the Docker log prune, the weekly report check, alert
reconcile, agent age, Ansible schedules) fired on the first tick after
each deploy, while agents were flushing their backlog. Agent ingest was
slow or dropped for a few minutes after every deploy.
start_scheduler now calls tracker.begin(): such a task is first due one
interval after the loop starts.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
tcp_check swallowed every exception and icmp_check returned on a
non-zero exit without a reason, so every down ICMP/TCP monitor stored
error_msg NULL and the Monitors page and MCP showed it down with no why.
Each failure now names its cause: "No reply within 2 s", "Connection
refused on port N", "No answer on port N within 5 s", "Can't resolve
<name>: ...", the OS error, or ping's own first stderr line. An ICMP
check that fell back to TCP says so, and a ping that outlives its
timeout is killed rather than left running.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
