healthchecks/templates/docs/self_hosted.html

<h1>Self-Hosted Healthchecks</h1>
<p>Healthchecks is open-source, and is licensed under the BSD 3-clause license.</p>
<p>As an alternative to using the hosted service at
<a href="https://healthchecks.io">https://healthchecks.io</a>, you have the option to host a
Healthchecks instance yourself.</p>
<p>The building blocks are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Python 3.6+</li>
<li>Django 3</li>
<li>PostgreSQL or MySQL</li>
</ul>
<h2>Setting Up for Development</h2>
<p>You can set up a development environment in a Python
<a href="https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/venv.html">virtual environment</a>
on your local system to develop a new feature, write a new integration
or test a bugfix.</p>
<p>The following instructions assume you are using a Debian-based OS.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Install dependencies:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y gcc python3-dev python3-venv
</code></pre></div>

</li>
<li>
<p>Prepare directory for project code and virtualenv. Feel free to use a
  different location:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ mkdir -p ~/webapps
$ <span class="nb">cd</span> ~/webapps
</code></pre></div>

</li>
<li>
<p>Prepare virtual environment
  (with virtualenv you get pip, we'll use it soon to install requirements):</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ python3 -m venv hc-venv
$ <span class="nb">source</span> hc-venv/bin/activate
</code></pre></div>

</li>
<li>
<p>Check out project code:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ git clone https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks.git
</code></pre></div>

</li>
<li>
<p>Install requirements (Django, ...) into virtualenv:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ pip install wheel
$ pip install -r healthchecks/requirements.txt
</code></pre></div>

</li>
<li>
<p>Create database tables and a superuser account:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ <span class="nb">cd</span> ~/webapps/healthchecks
$ ./manage.py migrate
$ ./manage.py createsuperuser
</code></pre></div>

<p>With the default configuration, Healthchecks stores data in a SQLite file
<code>hc.sqlite</code> in the project directory (<code>~/webapps/healthchecks/</code>).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Run tests:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py <span class="nb">test</span>
</code></pre></div>

</li>
<li>
<p>Run development server:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py runserver
</code></pre></div>

</li>
<li>
<p>From another shell, run the <code>sendalerts</code> management command, responsible for
  sending out notifications:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py sendalerts
</code></pre></div>

</li>
</ul>
<p>At this point, the site should now be running at <code>http://localhost:8000</code>.</p>
<h2>Accessing Administration Panel</h2>
<p>Healthchecks comes with Django's administration panel where you can manually
view and modify user accounts, projects, checks, integrations etc. To access it,
if you haven't already, create a superuser account:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py createsuperuser
</code></pre></div>

<p>Then, log into the site using the superuser credentials. Once logged in,
click on the "Account" dropdown in top navigation, and select "Site Administration".</p>
<h2>Sending Emails</h2>
<p>Healthchecks needs SMTP credentials to be able to send emails:
login links, monitoring notifications, monthly reports.</p>
<p>Specify SMTP credentials using the <code>EMAIL_HOST</code>, <code>EMAIL_PORT</code>, <code>EMAIL_HOST_USER</code>,
<code>EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD</code>, and <code>EMAIL_USE_TLS</code> environment variables. Example:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code><span class="na">EMAIL_HOST</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">my-smtp-server-here.com</span>
<span class="na">EMAIL_PORT</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">587</span>
<span class="na">EMAIL_HOST_USER</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">my-username</span>
<span class="na">EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">mypassword</span>
<span class="na">EMAIL_USE_TLS</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">True</span>
</code></pre></div>

<p>You can read more about handling outbound email in the Django documentation,
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/topics/email/">Sending Email</a> section.</p>
<h2>Receiving Emails</h2>
<p>Healthchecks comes with a <code>smtpd</code> management command, which starts up a
SMTP listener service. With the command running, you can ping your
checks by sending email messages.</p>
<p>Start the SMTP listener on port 2525:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py smtpd --port <span class="m">2525</span>
</code></pre></div>

<p>Send a test email:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ curl --url <span class="s1">&#39;smtp://127.0.0.1:2525&#39;</span> <span class="se">\</span>
    --mail-from <span class="s1">&#39;[email protected]&#39;</span> <span class="se">\</span>
    --mail-rcpt <span class="s1">&#39;[email protected]&#39;</span> <span class="se">\</span>
    -F <span class="s1">&#39;=&#39;</span>
</code></pre></div>

<h2>Sending Status Notifications</h2>
<p>The <code>sendalerts</code> management command continuously polls the database for any checks
changing state, and sends out notifications as needed.
When <code>sendalerts</code> is not running, the Healthchecks instance will not send out any
alerts.</p>
<p>Within an activated virtualenv, run the <code>sendalerts</code> command like so:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py sendalerts
</code></pre></div>

<p>In a production setup, make sure the <code>sendalerts</code> command can survive
server restarts.</p>
<h2>Database Cleanup</h2>
<p>With time and use the Healthchecks database will grow in size. You may
decide to prune old data: inactive user accounts, old checks not assigned
to users, old records of outgoing email messages and old records of received pings.
There are separate Django management commands for each task:</p>
<p>Remove old records from the <code>api_ping</code> table. For each check, keep 100 most
recent pings:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py prunepings
</code></pre></div>

<p>Remove old records of sent notifications. For each check, remove notifications that
are older than the oldest stored ping for the corresponding check.</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py prunenotifications
</code></pre></div>

<p>Remove inactive user accounts:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py pruneusers
</code></pre></div>

<p>Remove old records from the <code>api_tokenbucket</code> table. The TokenBucket
model is used for rate-limiting login attempts and similar operations.
Any records older than one day can be safely removed.</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py prunetokenbucket
</code></pre></div>

<p>Remove old records from the <code>api_flip</code> table. The Flip objects are used to track
status changes of checks, and to calculate downtime statistics month by month.
Flip objects from more than 3 months ago are not used and can be safely removed.</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>$ ./manage.py pruneflips
</code></pre></div>

<p>When you first try these commands on your data, it is a good idea to
test them on a copy of your database, and not on the live system.</p>
<p>In a production setup, you will want to run these commands regularly, as well as
have regular, automatic database backups set up.</p>
<h2>Next Steps</h2>
<p>Get the <a href="https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks">source code</a>.</p>
<p>See <a href="../self_hosted_configuration/">Configuration</a> for a list of configuration options.</p>