Web dashboard

The dashboard answers one question first: does anything need attention right now? Then it lets you drill from the whole estate down to one check on one host in two clicks.

It reads the report files that drsm_run.sh, system_report.sh and system_check.sh write, so it works with old and new setups. It needs PHP 7.2 or higher and loads no fonts or scripts from the internet. Try it in the live demo.

Overview

The Overview is the situational awareness page, built to read from across a room.

• Status banner: the overall state in one line, such as 8 hosts need attention, with the time of the latest report.
• Counters: hosts, healthy, warning, error, not reporting, and failing plugin checks.
• Needs attention: every current error and warning, worst first, each linked to the plugin that raised it.
• Group checks: the connectivity and health result for each host group.
• Host matrix: one colored square per host, for a quick scan.
• Host cards: CPU, memory and disk bars and the plugin states for every host, with search and filters by state and host group.

Heat map

The heat map puts every host against every check. Check status shows a status icon per plugin: a green check for OK, an amber triangle for a warning, a red cross for an error, and a gray question mark for unknown. Problem cells are shaded so they stand out. Select a cell to open that check in the host report. The bottom row shows the worst state in each column.

Resource use shows CPU, memory, disk, load per CPU and swap as a percentage, colored from teal through green, amber and orange to red, so the busiest hosts stand out before they alert. Sort Worst first or A to Z.

Hosts and host reports

The Hosts page is a table of every host, sortable by any column. Select a host for its report: details, gauges for CPU, memory, disk, load and swap, and a panel per plugin with the problems open first. Error and warning lines are highlighted, and Archived reports lists earlier runs.

Connectivity

The Connectivity page has the connectivity (probe) and health reports for each host group, the same reports that go out in the alert emails.

Phones, tablets and wall screens

• Responsive: every page works on a phone, a tablet and a desktop.
• Light and dark: follows the device setting; the sun and moon button switches it.
• Live refresh: pages reload every $REFRESHseconds (60 by default). The ring button shows the countdown and pauses it. A reload waits while you are typing in a search box, and keeps your scroll position.
• Wall display: the expand button hides the controls for a NOC screen. Esc leaves it.
• Not reporting: a host whose report is older than $STALEminutes (60 by default) is shown in purple, so a stopped cron or a dead monitor does not look like a healthy estate.
• Any URL path: serve it from /sysadmin, /drsm/dashboard or anywhere else.

Customizing the dashboard

Add settings to $CONFIGdir/drsm.php:

$SITEtitle = 'MY System Monitor';  // Name in the top bar
$REFRESHseconds = 60;              // Auto refresh, 0 turns it off
$STALEminutes = 60;                // Report age that counts as not reporting, 0 turns it off

For colors and styles, edit $WWWdir/site/custom.css, which loads after the DRSM styles. Colors are CSS variables:

:root { --accent: #e11d48; }

To replace the header and footer, add page_header.php and page_footer.php to $WWWdir/site. The header must print drsm_head_assets() to keep the styles and scripts, and leave <main> open:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>MY System Monitor</title>
<?php echo drsm_head_assets(); ?>
</head>
<body data-refresh="<?php echo (int)$REFRESHseconds; ?>">
<main class="page">

Updates and reinstalls never overwrite $WWWdir/index.php or anything in $WWWdir/site.

Web only package

utils/make_web_demo.sh builds a copy of the dashboard for a host with nothing but Apache and PHP, such as a HostGator or other cPanel account. It finds its own files, so no server paths need to be set.

It writes <outdir>/dashboard/ and <outdir>/drsm_dashboard.zip. How to upload it and keep its reports up to date is in Workstation with a hosted dashboard.

Login from outside your network

The dashboard can ask for a user name and password from anyone outside your own networks, while people on the internal network get straight in. It is off by default, so a public demo stays open, and it is plain PHP, so it works on shared hosting.

1. Make a password hash for each account. Run this on any machine with PHP; it asks for the password without showing it:

   $ php ~/drsm/utils/drsm_password.php admin

2. Add the settings to config/drsm.php, with the printed line in $AUTHusers:

   $AUTHenable = 1;
   $AUTHnetworks = array('127.0.0.1/32', '::1/128', '10.0.0.0/8',
                         '172.16.0.0/12', '192.168.0.0/16');
   $AUTHusers = array(
     'admin' => '$2y$10$...',
   );

3. Block direct access to the reports folder, which the login can not cover because it is served as plain files. make_web_demo.sh -a does this; otherwise put Require all denied in reports/.htaccess. With login on, the Archived reports buttons read reports through the pages.

Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes. Sessions use HttpOnly, SameSite cookies, Secure on HTTPS, with a new session id at login, and the login and sign out forms carry a CSRF token.

Security

• Report text is escaped and printed as text, never run or rendered as HTML, so output from a monitored host cannot inject code into the page.
• Host names in URLs are checked, so ../ paths are refused.
• The Web only package blocks direct downloads of status.json.
• Reports still contain process lists and user names: turn on the login or put the dashboard behind a firewall, as in Web server.