Services Monitoring Overview

FreeOnly availability check

StarterOnly availability check

ProfessionalAll specific metrics

Glouton automatically discovers services running on your system and monitors them. Each service page displays badges indicating the supported monitoring capabilities:

• Auto-Detection — Glouton detects the service by its listening port or process
• Health Check — Glouton verifies the service is responding correctly
• Built-in Metrics — Glouton collects metrics natively (e.g., Redis INFO, MySQL status variables)
• Prometheus Metrics — Glouton scrapes the service’s native /metrics endpoint
• Exporter Metrics — Metrics collected via a third-party Prometheus exporter
• Logs — Glouton collects and parses the service’s log files

If your service is not listed, you can define a custom check or a custom metric. To disable metrics for a service, see service_ignore_metrics.

Supported Services

Service	Auto-Detection	Health Check	Built-in	Prometheus	Exporter	Logs
Apache HTTP	✓	✓	✓	—	—	✓
Asterisk	✓	—	—	—	✓	—
Authentik	—	—	—	✓	—	—
BIND	✓	—	—	—	✓	—
Bitbucket	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
Caddy	—	—	—	✓	—	—
Cassandra	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
ClickHouse	—	—	—	✓	—	—
CockroachDB	—	—	—	✓	—	—
Confluence	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
Consul	—	—	—	✓	—	—
CoreDNS	—	—	—	✓	—	—
Couchbase	—	—	—	✓	—	—
CouchDB	—	—	—	✓	—	—
Dovecot	✓	✓	—	—	✓	—
ejabberd	✓	—	—	✓	—	—
Elasticsearch	✓	✓	✓	—	—	—
Emissary-ingress	—	—	—	✓	—	—
Envoy	—	—	—	✓	—	—
etcd	—	—	—	✓	—	—
Exim4	✓	✓	✓	—	—	—
Fail2ban	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
Forgejo	—	—	—	✓	—	—
FreeRADIUS	✓	—	—	—	✓	—
Gitea	—	—	—	✓	—	—
GitLab	—	—	—	✓	—	—
HAProxy	✓	—	✓	✓	—	✓
Infisical	—	—	—	✓	—	—
InfluxDB	✓	✓	—	✓	—	—
Jenkins	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
JIRA	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
Kafka	✓	—	✓	—	—	✓
libvirtd	✓	—	—	—	✓	—
Memcached	✓	✓	✓	—	—	—
MinIO	—	—	—	✓	—	—
MongoDB	✓	—	✓	—	—	✓
Mosquitto	✓	—	—	—	✓	—
MySQL / MariaDB	✓	—	✓	—	—	✓
NATS	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
NFS	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
NSQ	—	—	—	—	✓	—
Nginx	✓	✓	✓	—	—	✓
NTP	✓	✓	—	—	✓	—
OpenLDAP	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
OpenVPN	✓	—	—	—	✓	—
PHP-FPM	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
Postfix	✓	✓	✓	—	—	—
PostgreSQL	✓	—	✓	—	—	✓
PowerDNS	—	—	—	✓	—	—
RabbitMQ	✓	✓	✓	—	—	✓
Redis	✓	✓	✓	—	—	✓
RethinkDB	—	—	—	—	✓	—
Riak	—	—	—	—	✓	—
RustFS	—	—	—	✓	—	—
Salt	✓	—	—	—	—	—
Squid	✓	✓	—	—	✓	—
Traefik	—	—	—	✓	—	—
UPSD	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
uWSGI	✓	—	✓	—	—	—
Valkey	✓	✓	✓	—	—	✓
Varnish	✓	—	—	—	✓	—
Vault	—	—	—	✓	—	—
ZooKeeper	✓	✓	✓	—	—	—

Common Features

Service Status

Glouton checks TCP sockets for each service. By default, a simple TCP connection tests the service, but some services support a specific health check. These checks run every minute. For TCP services, Glouton keeps a connection open and re-checks immediately if that connection breaks.

The current status can be viewed in the Status Dashboard, and you can configure a notification to be alerted on status changes.

The status history is stored in a metric named service_status with two labels:

• service: the type of service (e.g., “apache”, “nginx”)
• service_instance: the container name (absent for non-containerized services)

Status values:

• 0 — check passed successfully
• 1 — check passed with a warning (e.g., Apache returned a 404)
• 2 — check detected an issue
• 3 — check status unknown (typically due to a timeout)

Overriding Auto-Detection Settings

You can override auto-detected service parameters using configuration files, Docker labels, or Kubernetes annotations.

Configuration File

Add entries to a Glouton configuration file:

service:
  - type: "apache"
    ignore_ports:
      - 8000
      - 9000
  - type: "mysql"
    instance: "name_of_a_container"
    username: root
    password: root

Each service is identified by the type and instance pair. The type must match a supported service name (“apache”, “nginx”, “postgresql”, etc.). The instance is the container name — omit it for non-containerized services.

Docker Labels / Kubernetes Annotations

Any overridable setting can be set using the prefix glouton.:

docker run --label glouton.ignore_ports="8000,9000" [...]

Or as a Kubernetes pod annotation:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
spec:
  template:
    metadata:
      annotations:
        glouton.ignore_ports: "8000,9000"

For security reasons, only an allow-list of settings can be applied through labels or annotations. Anyone able to start a container or a pod can set them, so settings that could run arbitrary commands on the host or read arbitrary files are restricted: they are ignored unless you explicitly opt in. The Container override column of the table below marks each setting as Default (honored out of the box) or Restricted. To allow a restricted setting, add it to container.allowed_label_overrides. This restriction only applies to labels and annotations — every setting can always be used in a configuration file.

Available Settings

Setting	Description	Supported Services	Container override
address	IP address the service listens on	All	Default
port	TCP port the service listens on	All	Default
ignore_ports	List of ports to exclude from auto-detection	All	Default
tags	List of tags to associate with the service	All	Default
interval	Check interval in seconds (minimum 60)	All	Default
http_path	Custom HTTP path for health check	Apache, InfluxDB, Nginx, Squid	Default
http_status_code	Expected HTTP status code	Apache, InfluxDB, Nginx, Squid	Default
http_host	HTTP Host header for virtual hosts	Apache, InfluxDB, Nginx, Squid	Default
username, password	Authentication credentials	Jenkins, MySQL, OpenLDAP, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, UPSD	Default
stats_url	URL for metrics endpoint	HAProxy, Jenkins, PHP-FPM	Default
stats_port	Port for metrics endpoint	NATS, RabbitMQ, uWSGI	Default
stats_protocol	Protocol for metrics endpoint	uWSGI	Default
metrics_unix_socket	Unix socket path for metrics	MySQL	Default
detailed_items	Items for per-item metrics	PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Kafka	Default
included_items, excluded_items	Include/exclude items	Jenkins	Default
jmx_port, jmx_username, jmx_password, jmx_metrics	JMX configuration	Java services	Default
ssl, ssl_insecure, starttls	TLS settings	OpenLDAP	Default
ca_file, cert_file, key_file	TLS certificate paths	OpenLDAP	Default
match_process	Process name/pattern used to detect the service	Custom checks	Default
check_type, check_command	Custom check type and command to run	Custom checks	Restricted
nagios_nrpe_name	Expose check to Nagios via NRPE	All	Restricted
log_format, log_filter	Log parsing format and filter	Services with log support	Default
log_files	Paths of the log files to collect	Services with log support	Restricted

Services with Default Log Support

Glouton comes with built-in log configuration for: Apache, HAProxy, Kafka, MongoDB, MySQL, Nginx, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Redis, and Valkey.