How I Set Up Network Monitoring on my Home Network Using Uptime-Kuma, a Free Open Source Tool
Monitor your applications, servers, websites, and more using Uptime Kuma. You can even have it send notifications to your phone!
I set up Network Monitoring on my home network using a free, open-source tool called Uptime Kuma - based on Network Chuck's tutorial here. I encourage you to try this too! Here's how:
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Create a new folder - I named mine uptimekuma.
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Using the command line, navigate into that folder (
cd uptimekuma)
- Verify you have Docker installed using the command
docker version.
If you're already accustomed to using docker desktop native app on your device, I recommend opening the app.
If you're new to Docker and don't have it installed, I recommend installing the Docker Desktop native app, or, if you're on a Windows PC you may want to follow Network Chuck's method (he sets up a Linode cloud server to use the Uptime Kuma app featured in Linode). In the video he also uses an on-premises server in his home lab, but you can simply use your own computer as your server. He runs sudo apt install docker.io -y to install docker, then sudo apt docker-compose -y` to install Docker Compose.
What is Docker? Docker is a tool/platform you can use to create, deploy, and run programs inside containers. A Docker container is like a nice, compact package that contains the program and everything needed to run the program (code, runtime, library, framework, etc.) .
What is Docker Compose? Docker Compose is a tool that comes with Docker. It helps you manage your containers by configuring your docker setup in a single YAML file.
Once you've installed both, you can move on to the next step.
- Next, you'll notice NetworkChuck creates a nano file in his folder (his is called mykuma) and simply copies and pastes in the docker/docker-compose.yml file, saves, then runs command
sudo docker-compose up -d. Note: The docker/docker-compose.yml file is available in the Uptime Kuma Github Repo. .
I tried this method, but it didn't quite work for me on my Mac. Instead, I simply copied and pasted the install command from the github repo:
docker run -d --restart=always -p 3001:3001 -v uptime-kuma:/app/data --name uptime-kuma louislam/uptime-kuma:1
- You can run command
sudo docker psto view all your docker containers currently running. If you see the newly added uptime-kuma container, you're in business!
Navigate to port 3001 in your browser and voila! You should see the Uptime Kuma 'Create Account' page.
- Once you're logged in, you can start adding anything you want to monitor. Websites, apps, cloud servers, even Docker containers. I tried setting up email alerts to my gmail account, but gmail's security settings didn't like them very much. I found it much easier and a better experience overall to set up alerts to my Discord - I simply created a new channel in my personal page called 'Alerts and Notifications' and sent the alerts there. Now, I receive a notification directly to my phone when uptime kuma detects an outage.
If you restart your computer and need to re-initialize your Uptime Kuma docker container, simply open up the Docker Desktop native app and log in, then navigate back into your folder from the command line and run command: docker start.
To view all of your docker containers, simply run command: sudo docker ps -a.
Definitely try out this very valuable and easy-to-use tool to start monitoring your applications, websites, and more!